Aguilar Castillo Love’s Honduran branch is one of this firm’s most prominent offices in the region. The Tegucigalpa office boasts strengths in corporate and M&A work as well as banking and finance, antitrust and energy. With its expansive regional network, the firm has demonstrated a great capacity for coordinating affairs on a regional scale. This office can lean on the firm’s impressive geographical reach across Central America, as well as Panama, Paraguay, Bolivia and Ecuador (via a joint venture, for cross-border work, helping it land impressive matters.
Not only is Aguilar Castillo Love occupied with transactional matters, but also focuses heavily on allaying client concerns about white-collar crime and compliance, a practice that is led regionally from Costa Rica by a partner brought into the firm especially.
This well-rounded offering is well-appreciated by clients, which is evidenced by in-house counsel research conducted by the Latin American Corporate Counsel Association (LACCA), into Who Represents Latin America’s Biggest Companies. Across Central America and Panama, Aguilar Castillo Love represents six of the approximately 100 biggest companies in Latin America, including Grupo Cargill, CEMEX and Enel.
The firm’s emphasis on complex transactions, preferring to select fewer cases based on a philosophy of quality over quantity, along with its high partner-associate ratio, and prioritisation of integrity and substance, preferring home-grown talent to lateral hires, combine to make Aguilar Castillo Love a 2023 Latin Lawyer Elite firm in Central America.
Aguilar Castillo Love is acutely aware of what it takes to keep up with, and indeed surpass, the competition. The firm constantly looks for ways to modernise itself and improve efficiency. Heavy investment in a talent programme, which includes scholarships for its young lawyers to undertake further studies, has been a key focus. Aguilar Castillo Love also supports a group of senior Central American in-house counsel who launched a Central American association for in-house lawyers called Asociación de Abogados de Empresas para Centroamérica in 2018.
Management
John Aguilar Quesada in San José and Juan Carlos Castillo in Guatemala City serve as the firm’s regional co-managing partners. Enrique Rodríguez Burchard leads the local operations in Honduras.
Offices
Aguilar Castillo Love has offices in the capital cities of each of the five Central American countries, as well as an office in Panama and Paraguay’s capital Asunción. The firm also has a presence in Quito through its joint venture with Ecuadorian firm Pólit & Pólit and established its newest outlet in Bolivia earlier in the year.