Overview
Sara Assis Ferreira is a Managing Associate in the Lisbon Litigation, Arbitration & Investigations department, with wide-ranging corporate civil and criminal litigation experience, representing clients and authorities in court, including the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), in the different stages of proceedings, and with particular expertise in complex and challenging regulatory & competition litigation and compliance matters, involving practices restricting competition, including antitrust investigations, and merger control cases.
Sara has furthermore gained experience in banking litigation, commercial arbitration, corporate disputes, M&A litigation due diligence, and corporate restructuring & insolvency issues.
She represents national and international clients such as banks, investment funds and corporate clients that operate in the automobile industry, financial, renewable energy, logistics, and retail sector in domestic and cross-border matters.
Her work as Legal Counsel in the litigation departments of national regulatory authorities, such as the Bank of Portugal and the Portuguese Competition Authority, rendered not only valuable insights and different perspectives, but also honed her litigation management skills, defining and monitoring procedural strategy, coordinating work teams, liaising internally with other departments and directly with the Board of Directors, and externally with different stakeholders.
Professional experience
Sara joined the Lisbon office of Linklaters in 2024 as Managing Associate in its Litigation, Arbitration & Investigations Department.
After summer traineeships at local law firms Abreu Advogados and PLMJ, she worked as Trainee-Lawyer in the Lisbon office of Garrigues, where she became an Associate, specialising in civil and commercial litigation and arbitration matters. She then worked at Campos Ferreira, Sá Carneiro & Associados, working as Associate in the Litigation & Arbitration department.
Sara furthermore gained experience in the position of Legal Technician at the Department of Sanctioning Action of the Bank of Portugal, where her work was mainly focused on financial and banking sanctioning proceedings, and as Legal Counsel at the Legal and Litigation Department of the Portuguese Competition Authority, where she represented the PCA in court in high-value multi-companies cases, in several different economic sectors, such as electricity, telecommunications, insurance and retail, developing litigation strategies and managing teams. She also acted as Interim Head of this Department, providing legal advice to the Board of Directors and to the various departments of the PCA, both in the administrative and in the judicial phases of the cases.
In the past Sara worked as volunteer in a School Economics project, going to primary schools to tell children about entrepreneurship.
Education and qualifications
Sara holds a Bachelor Law Degree of the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon (2009). Additionally she obtained a Master's Degree in Law and Management at the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Economics & Business Sciences of the Católica University (2010), attended the II Advanced Postgraduate Course in Banking Law of the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon (2017), and furthermore attended the Postgraduate Course in Public Regulation and Competition Law of the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra (2021).
Additionally she attended a course on EU Competition Law & Practice at the Collège d’Europe (2022) and the Lawyers Course: The role of economics in Competition Law and Practice at the Competition & Regulation European Summer School and Conference (CRESSE, 2021), as well as many internal and external seminars and webinars on Competition Law & Economics and Compliance.
She is a fully qualified Member of the Portuguese Bar Association since 2013.
Sara speaks Portuguese and English and has a working knowledge of Spanish.
