The office
Our history
Garcia & Keener was founded in Rio de Janeiro, in May 1959, by the lawyers José Geraldo Garcia de Souza and Ulysses Grant Keener Junior. At that time, there was only a few law firms in Brazil dedicated to assist foreign clients, a specialty pioneered by Garcia & Keener.
That innovative impetus has been persisting across the Office’s trajectory, leading many generations of professionals who have worked in it to be continually up to date with the unceasing transformation of legal practices that is provoked by the contemporary social evolutions.
We point out, for instance, that in 2022 the Office gave up its traditional head office installations in downtown Rio de Janeiro and moved to Leblon, a neighborhood in the South Zone of the city, seeking new airs and a shorter distance from its major clients.
Such a moval reflects a constant effort of adaptation to present times, of traditional values conscientiously maintained by the Office, be they with respect to the strict adherence to professional ethics guidelines or concerning investment in the training of new lawyers who have then become its members.
It also worths noting that as a consequence of that pursuit for being up to date, new specialties have been added to the main practices of the Office, such as entertainment, consumer law, copyrights, sports law.
These new practices were incorporated without neglecting the traditional segments of legal practice, to name a few ones, successions, probate proceedings and succession planning, in addition to the ones that have always been developed by the Office in its day-to-day operations giving full assistance to legal entities, for example, obligations and contracts, mergers and acquisitions, taxation, competition law, labor law and other segments related to business operations.
Thus, the members of Garcia & Keener, whether acting as legal advisors or in litigations, are fully capacitated, by applying intertwined practices, to give assistance to national and foreign clients of the most diverse economic sectors, always pursuing innovative and sustainable solutions in compliance with the modern precepts encompassed by the known acronym ESG that best meet their interests.
The Office has a branch in São Paulo and engages correspondents in the major Brazilian cities, mainly in Brasília, a substantial presence that has permitted us to attract new clients and to intensify our assistance to long-standing clients.
Garcia & Keener is, thus, a traditional law office with qualified members, which keeps long-lasting relationships with clients and can be proud of the outstanding technical results that it has achieved since its foundation. It is an office that is in permanent pursuit of excellence, in the benefit of its clients, by observing the principles connected with the best social and governance practices.