Our firm is one of the few of its size that can provide the services of experienced attorneys who have lived and worked in Latin America and the United States and who are fluent in all three of the principal languages of the Western Hemisphere – English, Spanish and Portuguese. Our resident partner in Mexico City has extensive experience practicing law in Mexico both in a firm setting and within a large, multinational company, and is one of the few American attorneys admitted to practice in Mexico – the United States’ main trading partner in the region. Another one of our partners lived for many years in Brazil and is intimately familiar with the workings of Latin America’s largest economy.

Our Latin America practice covers a wide range of areas, from establishing companies, including maquiladora companies in Mexico, and obtaining necessary licenses and permits to operate, to negotiating joint ventures with local companies, registering and/or licensing a company’s intellectual property, and obtaining the necessary work visas for company personnel. We also have extensive experience with the labor law and tax issues faced by companies operating in Mexico and can develop strategies for reducing labor and tax contingencies.

Unlike many foreign law firms that operate in Mexico, we have hands-on experience supervising litigation in the Mexican civil, criminal, administrative and labor courts and can advise our clients during negotiations on how to best protect themselves from potential pitfalls.

We have the specialized experience and the qualification to draft expert opinions on Mexican law for use in American litigation and arbitration proceedings – opinions that have been well-received, because they are drafted by attorneys whose native language is English and who have meaningful litigation experience in the United States.

From the Mexico side, we have advised many Mexican companies on their export operations around the world, especially to the United States, with special emphasis on pharmaceuticals and food and beverage products. We have also helped establish and negotiate numerous sales, distribution, and sales agency relationships for our Mexican and U.S. clients.

Our attorneys’ clients in the region have included Pepsi-Gemex, S.A. de C.V., Pemex, Embotelladora Garci Crespo, Internacional Farmacéutica, S.A. de C.V., Corporativo Infra, Boehringer-Ingelheim Promeco, GlaxoSmithKline, the Mills Corporation and the Animas Foundation. In the government sector, we have advised the National Tourism Fund (“FONATUR”) and the Ministry of the Environment.

Our partners have been involved in numerous complex, cross-border matters, including a $1.1 billion acquisition of a Mexican company by a large American multinational, and a strategic joint venture between an American company and a Mexican retail operation. On the preventive side, we have designed programs to reduce companies’ labor contingencies and worked closely with tax counsel to obtain tax reductions and exemptions through administrative litigation challenging the validity of certain tax laws.