At Aguilar Castillo Love, high-end corporate advice is available to major international players doing business across the region, through offices in all five Central American countries, as well as Bolivia, Panama and Paraguay.
Despite being smaller than many of its local competitors, Aguilar Castillo Love maintains its position as a highly sought-after firm in Costa Rica. Owing to its expansive regional network, the firm has demonstrated a proven capacity to coordinate affairs on a regional scale, earning it an impressive roster of clients. This notable group of clients is evident in the research into Who Represents Latin America’s Biggest Companies, conducted by the Latin American Corporate Counsel Association (LACCA), which is affiliated to Latin Lawyer. According to this research, Aguilar Castillo Love represents six of the approximately 100 biggest companies in Latin America. Some big clients who have turned to the firm include Accenture, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Mercedes-Benz.
Aguilar Castillo Love’s ambitious scope extends further beyond Central America. For many years the firm has had a joint venture with Ecuadorian firm Pólit and Pólit. In 2020, the firm also broke into the Paraguay market. Aguilar Castillo Love has not stopped there, opening in Bolivia in 2022, establishing a presence in both Santa Cruz and La Paz.
Meanwhile, consolidation of its existing offices remains a key priority. Carving out a space in countries overlooked by other international players is a core component of this firm’s strategy, keen to set itself apart as a truly home-grown firm across Central and South America.
A team of well-regarded senior partners lies behind this firm’s ambitious outlook. While corporate and M&A law continues to be the firm’s standout practice, those in need of banking, litigation and tax advice need not look elsewhere.
Restructuring and insolvency work has also been keeping the firm busy, with the El Salvador and Costa Rica teams having roles in Avianca’s emergence from its Chapter 11 restructuring process. This matter won the Latin Lawyer Deal of the Year Award in the restructuring category, whereby the firm provided local counsel in those two countries to debt administration services provider Glas Americas, which acted as collateral trustee for the exit financing transaction.
In the past year, the firm has seen increasing work in its labour practice, as well as in dispute resolution, above all litigation, with many clients from the energy sector turning to the firm’s litigation team. Regulatory work, especially in the realm of data privacy and technology, has also kept lawyers at the firm preoccupied, while anti-corruption work, added to the firm’s repertoire in recent years, has seen a particularly busy year in compliance due diligence.
Aguilar Castillo Love is a 2022 Latin Lawyer Elite Firm for good reason. Its underlying goal is to be a premier made-to-measure law firm with an unparalleled reputation for ethical practice, believing that practitioners come to work here due to these internal values. The firm emphasises quality over quantity as a key tenet, along with business ethics and compliance, and does not strive to be the largest, nor to do it all. Office headcounts are intentionally kept low to prevent talent from being diluted and prioritise integrity and substance, while clients and legal matters are chosen selectively. The partnership asserts that a law firm is only as strong as its reputation, and poor service can have a devastating effect.
Diversity is also a core focus within the firm. Partner Tatiana Rojas Hernandez heads the Costa Rican chapter of the Vance Center’s Women in the Profession initiative, which promotes female advancement in the legal profession. Aguilar Castillo Love also supports a group of senior Central American in-counsel, who launched the very first Central American association for in-house lawyers called Asociación de Abogados de Empresas para Centroamérica in 2018.
Aguilar Castillo Love (Costa Rica) also received Latin Lawyer’s Pro Bono Project of the Year Award in 2021 for its work on the Talamanca project, which helped to integrate members of local indigenous communities into Costa Rica’s formal economy.
Management
John Aguilar Quesada in San José and Juan Carlos Castillo in Guatemala City serve as the firm’s regional co-managing partners. Aguilar also leads the Costa Rica office. Costa Rica-based partner Esteban Agüero manages the firm’s operations in El Salvador, splitting his time between the two countries.
Offices
Aguilar Castillo Love has offices in all five Central American jurisdictions, as well as branches in Panama and Paraguay. It also has a joint venture with Ecuadorian firm Pólit & Pólit. In 2022, the firm launched operations in Bolivia.