Allende & Brea

Allende & Brea

Allende & Brea is a law firm in Buenos Aires, Argentina, founded by Juan Martin Allende and Teodosio Cesar Brea.

History

After graduating from the School of Law of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Juan Martin Allende and Teodosio César Brea, went to study at the Latin-American Law Institute of the New York University in 1948 and 1952, respectively. They worked in the same American law firm without meeting each other. In 1957, an American lawyer coming from the same firm and university visited Buenos Aires and invited them over for dinner. Allende and Brea got in tune immediately and, back from dinner, continued their conversation. At the end of the meeting they shook hands and agreed to work together as partners in a law firm.[1]

The firm grew rapidly and in two years they had over 30 lawyers working (currently 80 lawyers). The start-up was coincident with the industrialization and modernization process launched in Argentina by former President Arturo Frondizi’s administration. Two major clients at the beginning were Industrias Kaiser Argentina (IKA) and Nobleza Piccardo.

Both Allende and Brea had very clear principles from the start: (i) selling legal services, not undue influence, (ii) a strong professional commitment to work (the law firm was the first to bill its clients based on time in Argentina) and (iii) trust in young people and use of technology for the legal profession.[1] Since 1977, the law firm has been located at the IRSA Tower, formerly known as Pirelli Tower, which has been designed by renowned architect Mario Bigongiari and faces the San Martin Park in the Retiro area of Buenos Aires. The law firm used to have an office in Madrid during the '80s, and also had offices in New York, Atlanta and Miami.[2]

Anniversaries: a quarter-and-a-half century

In 1982, the firm turned 25 and celebrated its anniversary with a book on the history of the Argentine Supreme Court and its connection with the U.S. Supreme Court’s case law on constitutional matters due to the influence that the U.S. Supreme court has on Constitutional law in Argentina.[3] Allende & Brea contacted the Argentine constitutional scholar Germán Bidart Campos to write it. The book was published in two editions, one in Spanish and one English.

Bidart Campos's book on the Supreme Court of Argentina, in English

Mr. Brea recalls they had thought of sending the book by mail to the United States Supreme Court, but Lloyd Cutler,[4] an American lawyer friend, suggested giving the book in person. They traveled and met with several U.S. Justices in D.C. where they had a pleasant meeting talking about both countries’ case law for an hour.[1] The firm celebrated its 50th anniversary with a reception at the Alvear Palace Hotel, which gathered over 600 people including clients and members of the legal community of Buenos Aires.[1]

Leading cases

The law firm has represented clients in several leading cases in Argentina.

For instance, the firm filed the appeal to the Supreme Court in the Swift-Deltec case, in which the Argentine Supreme Court rendered a decision on business groups’ liability and piercing of the corporate veil.

Also, the firm took part in the case Vizzoti v. AMSA S.A.,[5] in which the Argentine Supreme Court declared the unconstitutionality of the severance pay cap provided for by section 245 of the Employment Contract Law.

Finally, the firm acted in several cases related to Intellectual Property law. One was the case Marriott Corporation v. RILA S.A.,[6] in which the Argentine Supreme Court rendered a significant ruling on bad faith registration of trademark.

The law firm also participated actively in the Coca Cola v. Pepsi litigation regarding the known Pepsi Challenge case, in which a federal district court[7] declared for the first time in Argentina the legality of comparative advertising. This is the only case dealing with comparative advertising to reach the Supreme Court of Argentina.[8]

Another case is Organizacion Veraz/Equifax vs. Open Discovery, the first case in Argentina of unauthorized use of trademarks as keyword advertising on the Internet where the firm obtained a temporary injunction to ban the use of trademarks as keywords by a competitor in the credit reporting market.[9]

Technology and the legal profession

The firm was one of the first drivers of the use of technology for the legal profession in Argentina and in Latin America.

In 1989, Allende & Brea partnered with the Argentine IT company Albrematica[10] and legal publisher El Derecho[11] to produce El Derecho in laser disk (El Derecho en disco láser), a compact disc (CD-ROM) containing the complete collection of the law journal El Derecho with 300,000 case-law summaries and the full text of all important Argentine legal precedents rendered by local courts.[12] Later editions of the CD-ROM also contained Supreme Court cases from 1985 to 1992, the Constitution and the civil, criminal and commercial codes. This was the first legal database in the Latin American region.

Furthermore, the software included in the CD ROM featured a search function that allowed users to search case law by one or more single words, by theme or by a question posed in natural language (based on Claude Shannon's work in information theory), a complete innovation by that time since till then lawyers had to do the search manually using the entries in the back-of-the-book index for each year. Once the project was launched, "they realized that the then existing processes did not allow scanning the entire collection because of the diversity of typefaces used in it, so they undertook the daunting task of re-typing almost three decades of the law journal".[1] The software application used to search for cases was called Justina. The CD-ROM has now been replaced by internet-accessible legal databases.

Pro bono practice

Allende & Brea is a member of the pro bono and Public Interest Committee of the Bar Association of the City of Buenos Aires.[13] The committee, created in the year 2000, is a space that draws a number of law firms together with the purpose of providing legal assistance at no cost in issues affected with a public interest that, for representing collective interests, project their effects over broad community sectors. The firm is a registered member of the Pro Bono Committee since its creation and has played an active role in it from the start, providing free legal assistance in several issues presented by the Committee.

External links

See also

Teodosio Cesar Brea

University of Buenos Aires

Law firms

Argentina

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Rouillon, Jorge (September 10, 2007). "Allende y Brea medio siglo de un estudio jurídico innovador". La Nación (in Spanish). Retrieved January 26, 2015.
  2. ↑ Allende Brea expande su área de influencia a Miami, La Nación newspaper, June 12, 2002, http://www.lanacion.com.ar/610223-allende-brea-expande-su-area-de-influencia-a-miami
  3. ↑ Jonathan M. Miller, A Study of U.S. Constitutional Practice as Authority in Nineteenth Century Argentina and the Argentinean Elite's Leap of Faith, 46 Am. U. L. Rev. 1483 (1997).
  4. ↑ Lloyd Cutler was an influential American lawyer in Washington DC and founder of then law firm Wilmer Cutler and Pickering, currently WilmerHale.
  5. ↑ See CSJN, Fallos de la Corte Suprema, 14 de sept. de 2004 - V. 967. XXXVIII. Vizzoti, Carlos Alberto c/ Amsa S.A. s/ despido
  6. ↑ See CSJN, Fallos de la Corte Suprema, Marriott Corporation v. RILA S.A. (La Ley 1991-E-499).
  7. ↑ Jdo. Civ y Com. Fed. n. 1 sec. 1, 21/10/1998, The Coca Cola Company y otros c/Pepsi Cola Argentina SAIC y otros (expte. 7.982/1993), http://www.derechodemarcas.com/blog/2015/01/caso-coca-cola-v-pepsi-spublicidad-comparativa/.
  8. ↑ Corte Sup., 12/9/1995, "The Coca-Cola Company y otros", Fallos 318:1711 (1995), ED 165-291 y LL 1995-E-338.
  9. ↑ See Federal District Court n. 2, sec. 3, Organizacion Veraz v. Open Discovery s/medida cautelar, http://www.derechodemarcas.com/blog/2014/11/caso-organizacion-veraz-v-open-discovey-globinfo-com-ar/
  10. ↑ Albrematica SA, the company name being the conjunction of Allende +Brea+Informatica.
  11. ↑ El Derecho, http://www.elderecho.com.ar/index.php?cXdlcnR5YWN0aW9uPTNxd2VydHk=
  12. ↑ See Albermática, Quienes somos, http://www.eldial.com/nuevo/quienes-somos.asp
  13. ↑ Comisión Pro Bono del Colegio de Abogados de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, available at http://www.probono.org.ar/


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