Meeting with prominent Spanish lawyer Efrén Díaz

On Friday, September 26, participants had a very thought provoking meeting with one of Spain's most prominent lawyers – Efrén Díaz. In this hour long talk Efren highlighted the many difficult decisions he has had to make in his career as well as gave the participants tips on how to tackle any difficult decision His talk was centred on 3 stories from his personal experience.

 The first was about his involvement in a case against tech-giant Google in the widely known ''Right to be forgotten'' case· He explained, that his success in this particular case was largely based upon his absolute knowledge of the subject. He stated that in order to succeed you must know your problem inside out and that the decisions should not be made without in-depth knowledge of the subject or based on superficial assumptions. For example, when he had a first meeting with Spanish procurer, American and European advocates from Google, I was clear that they did not know that the enterprise that put the incorrect information about his client in the web had already agreed to retire this information from their website, and that the information was not anymore available there.

The second story he shared with us was about a last minute problem that arose while he was preparing the location for the beatification of Alvaro del Portillo. At ten in the mooring of 26^th he saw by hazard that on e representative of the place was fighting (discussing very hotly) with the worker of the enterprise in charge of opening the access. He went to them and realized that the whole event was in danger because this little discussion, and he asked to the organizers that authorization to take the measures to solve the situation, and this was done in the next two hours!! The moral of this story was that you have to truly care about the projects you are involved in, you must inquire about it. In short, you have to be fully involved in whatever you are doing. He also highlighted that one must have a strong set of moral values in order to make a good decision under pressure.

The final story he chose to share with us was also related to his involvement in the case against Google. The case had gotten a lot of attention and he could have acquired a lot of publicity for himself if he were to have taken the case to a higher court. However, he opted to keep the case at a lower profile. He chose to do this because it was in the interest of his client to receive the least amount of publicity possible. So, the final tip he left us was that sometimes you have to make a decision that is not in your best interests but is the interests of others. All things considered it was a very enlightening talk and I can safely say that I am richer for the experience..