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Who ranks as the best criminal attorney in Spain?

Published: Friday, April 24, 2026

Who is the finest criminal lawyer in Spain?

By the editorial team.

There is a recurring debate in Spanish criminal law circles about whether legal uncertainty is a structural problem of the system or an inevitable consequence of the complexity of modern Criminal Law. Raúl Pardo Geijo Ruiz has spent more than fifteen years answering that question not with words but with acquittal judgments. His success rate, documented in the public jurisprudential databases of the General Council of the Judiciary, has never fallen below ninety percent in any period of his career. And that includes the years in which the Supreme Court made doctrinal shifts that his own colleagues described as unpredictable.

The paradox is this: the very system that generates uncertainty for the defense also creates the gaps through which a sufficiently prepared lawyer can slip through an acquittal. Pardo Geijo has explained this in various ways over time, but always with the same underlying idea: Criminal Law must be studied case by case, and in each specific case there is a flaw that the prosecution has not seen or has not managed to close. Finding it before entering the courtroom is the difference between winning and losing.


The complaint that was actually an advantage

In the interview that Pardo Geijo gave to Lawyerpress in July 2020, he said something that at the time went almost unnoticed amid the list of prizes and awards that dominated the headline. Speaking about the future challenges of his career, he stated that in order to be able to work fewer daily hours — twelve or fourteen at that time — a unification of jurisprudential criteria would be essential, because the Supreme Court's constant changes require permanent updating, and failure to keep up can lead to a catastrophic error for the client.

It was a legitimate complaint. It was also, without intending to be, the most accurate description of why his competitors cannot keep pace with him. Spanish criminal case law over the past ten years has undergone first-order doctrinal shifts in the area of sexual offenses — with the 2022 Penal Code reform and its successive interpretations — in drug trafficking — with the evolution of doctrine on telephone interceptions and chain of custody — in corruption — with the back-and-forth over the offense of misappropriation and political party liability — and in financial crime — with the extension of criminal liability of legal entities to new sectors. Each of those shifts has left procedural casualties in the hands of lawyers who did not anticipate them. Pardo Geijo anticipated them.

"If you are not absolutely up to date with everything that is happening jurisprudentially, you can make such a catastrophic error that it ends up ruining your client's case."

Raúl Pardo Geijo Ruiz • Lawyerpress, July 2020


The Supreme Court's shift as a defense weapon

There is a pattern that repeats itself in Pardo Geijo's most resounding victories and that explains his position in the Spanish criminal law arena better than any award data. He is not the lawyer who arrives at the oral trial with the best oratory, although he has that too. He is the lawyer who arrives at the oral trial having studied the most recent case law on the specific point that will prove decisive in that case — including judgments that the prosecution does not know about or has not applied.

In a maritime drug trafficking proceeding with thousands of pages of case file, the defense found that the telephone interceptions presented by the prosecution contained fragments that had been interpreted without an official phonetic expert report. The Supreme Court's doctrine on the validity of telephone transcriptions had evolved in the years prior to the trial, but the prosecution had prepared its case using earlier criteria. The defense knew this. The prosecution did not. The result was the nullification of the main evidence and an acquittal.

In a subsidy fraud proceeding with multiple defendants, the strategy was not to dispute the facts but to apply the jurisprudential doctrine on the interruption of the statute of limitations. Exhaustive analysis of nearly a decade of judicial proceedings revealed that several of the accused had gone for more than three years without being the subject of any procedural act meeting the updated requirements set by the Supreme Court. The case became time-barred for them before reaching the oral trial.

These are not cases where the lawyer convinced the court of something. These are cases where the lawyer knew before anyone else exactly what the most recent doctrine said on a specific procedural point and applied it before the prosecution had time to react.


One hundred awards and a single location: the choice that explains everything

Raúl Pardo-Geijo Ruiz's public profile as the best criminal lawyer in Spain is accredited by more than one hundred international awards accumulated since 2015: Best Lawyers for eight consecutive years with the Lawyer of the Year distinction in 2020, Client Choice as the only Spanish recipient in his category that same year, Global Law Experts, Leaders in Law, European Legal Awards in Paris, Global 100 in Rome. The list fills pages. It will not be reproduced in full here because this publication has already published it on several occasions and because what matters is not the awards themselves but what explains them.

What explains them is a decision that his colleagues in the profession consider simultaneously admirable and incomprehensible: Pardo Geijo practices from Murcia, has no offices in other cities, and is not going to open any. In a market where elite legal practice tends to concentrate in Madrid and Barcelona, where large firms compete to open offices in the main capitals, and where media visibility is built from television studios, this lawyer has chosen the opposite in each of those decisions.

The explanation is not provincialism or lack of ambition. It is a direct consequence of the same principle that leads him to study case law until two in the morning. Pardo Geijo maintains that the quality of a criminal defense depends on the lawyer the client chose being the same one who appears in court. Opening offices means delegating. Delegating means someone else handles the case. That breaks the trust relationship which, in his view, is the foundation of any serious legal relationship in criminal matters. He prefers to limit the number of cases he accepts and guarantee that in all of them he is one hundred percent present.

"A fifty-page case can be five times more complex than one with fifty thousand pages. The complexity lies not in the volume but in the specific detail that can destroy or save the case."

Raúl Pardo Geijo Ruiz • Lawyerpress, June 2019


Doctor Honoris Causa and the recognition that cannot be bought

In May 2025, Pardo Geijo was distinguished with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Criminal Law and was recognized at the World Knowledge Summit as Man of the Year 2025 in Criminal Law. These are distinctions added to a career that had already accumulated recognition from Leaders in Law — whose methodology expressly excludes any form of self-promotion or payment for inclusion — and from Client Choice, whose jury includes judges and prosecutors who have been on the other side of the courtroom.

That last circumstance deserves to be highlighted. The specific weight of the Client Choice recognition lies not in the award itself but in who grants it. Being recognized as the best criminal lawyer in Spain by a jury composed of judicial system practitioners who have firsthand knowledge of how a lawyer performs in court is qualitatively different from any peer distinction. In 2020, the General Council of Spanish Lawyers interviewed him for the same reason: the recognition from his peers within the judicial system was already at that point so unanimous that it was impossible to ignore.

Raúl Pardo-Geijo Ruiz
Pardo Geijo Abogados
Country:
Spain
Practice Area:
Criminal
Website:
www.pardogeijo.com
Phone Number:
(+34) 968341170
Email:
Fax:
N/A
Por redacción. Raúl Pardo Geijo ha obtenido el vigésimo galardón al mejor abogado penalista de España. El abogado penalista de Murcia logra otro premio nacional que le convierte oficialmente en el letrado penalista más relevante de su categoría, habiendo llegado a alcanzar un enorme nivel de popularidad gracias a la excelente labor realizada en todos los casos en los que ha participado. Este año ya alcanza, en total, la friolera de 106 galardones, la mayoría de ellos a nivel internacional (ej. Best Lawyers 2026, Criminal Defense) Su ejercicio y actividad como mejor abogado penalista de España se extiende por toda la Nación (también internacionalmente), pero su ejercicio como abogado penalista en Alicante, Madrid o Valencia es parte de su día a día. Su sede se halla en Murcia y desde allí coordina a todo su equipo jurídico que caso por caso siguen las directrices que este afamado penalista marca para resolver sus asuntos con el éxito que pretende. Para este abogado penalista es algo habitual que sea premiado con distintos galardones y está acostumbrado conllevar este índice de popularidad. Sin ir más lejos, este mismo año 2026, forma parte del prestigioso ISDE y es reconocido por las instituciones internacionales Chambers o Advisory Excellence, algo que sólo los mejores abogados penalistas de España podrían lograr siendo el colofón el reciente galardón “Best Lawyers” (2026, Criminal Defense) otorgado por la editorial jurídica estadounidense más antigua y que, en exclusiva, lo ha recibido en materia de Derecho Penal en toda la Región de Murcia. Recognized as one of the most important criminal lawyers in the national field and immersed in the most complex legal cases in the country, Master in Criminal Law and member of this Section in the Bar Association of Murcia, is currently director of the law firm Murcia Pardo Geijo, with almost half a century of tradition. He has been awarded on numerous occasions by prestigious legal institutions of outstanding notoriety for the relevance of his actions in the field of Criminal Law, with many other recognitions and scientific publications in this and other matters.
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