Firm overview
For 30 years, Albagli Zaliasnik (AZ) has been dedicated to providing clients with creative and innovative solutions. We are a leading non-traditional law firm providing a full spectrum of legal and business services, based in Santiago de Chile. At AZ, our goal is to add value to everything we do. Keeping this in mind, we proactively work with our clients using a holistic approach in order to produce forward-thinking and ingenious results in an ever changing technology-focused world.
AZ is a full-service law firm that is organized into three major practice groups: corporate, litigation and intellectual and industrial property. Within these core groups, we have various speciality practices that include banking and financial law, competition and antitrust, compliance, information technology and data protection, labor and employment law, venture capital, real estate law, tax law, public law, insurance, anti-counterfeiting and international commercial law as well as many types of litigation such as, criminal, civil and commercial, domestic and international arbitration, white-collar crime, extradition, and class action proceedings, among others.
AZ is one of the only law firms in Chile that has a skilled team which expertly mixes business with litigation. We regularly advise on complex cross-border transactions, have profound knowledge and experience within regulated markets, and are experts in preventative and criminal compliance. As a result of increased globalization, Chile and Latin America have implemented extensive regulatory requirements which increase the risk for national and international corporations to operate within these markets. For AZ, compliance is more than adhering to the rules or responding to issues after the fact, we treat compliance as a strategic instrument of corporate management.
At AZ, we think and work globally. We are one of the only law firms in Chile with a specialized in-house international team made up of tri-lingual lawyers and a support staff hailing from all corners of the world. Our concrete network of associate firms located in 65 different jurisdictions across the globe allows us to seamlessly work wherever our clients’ needs take them regardless of where they are located in the world.
Diversity and inclusion: At the start of 2019, AZ created a Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Since the inauguration, the committee has put on four different diversity workshops within the firm for all employees, not just lawyers, partnering with the local Chilean diversity promotion NGO Acción Empresas (http://accionempresas.cl/). Subsequently, due to our continued partnership with Acción Empresas, we have signed on as their chief legal representative (pro bono) in all sorts of matters.
Here in Latin America, and especially within Chile, the legal market lacks diversity. In AZ, we can proudly say that with us, that is not the case. Close to 50% of the AZ workforce is made up by women, the majority of our lawyers are under the age of 35, and we currently employ eight immigrants from different countries. Due to this dynamic make up, we have decided to promote what makes us different from the rest by formally creating a group of people within the firm dedicated to protecting AZ’s diverse ways.
AZ is one of the leaders in the wave of change that is coming to Chile and LatAm in general when it comes to diversity in the legal profession.
Pro Bono: AZ is a proud founding member of Fundación Pro Bono Chile and signatory of the Pro Bono Network of the Americas which is powered through the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice in New York, USA. As such, pro bono matters are at the core of AZ’s firm values, which we instill into our associates and partners.
Although pro bono work is voluntary for the members of the firm, we support and promote the provision of pro bono services by our associates. The firm also expects partners to actively supervise the work of its associates, and expects new attorneys to work on at least one pro bono matter within their first year of incorporation.
One of the values of the firm in general is to promote the principles of diversity and non-discrimination. These principles are also materialized through pro bono work, since this allows access and coverage to the problems of legal relevance that Albagli Zaliasnik seeks to contribute to solve.
Through pro bono work, all the lawyers in the office are given the possibility of providing representation in cases that require access to justice, providing the special attention and emphasis that these cases need given their social relevance. It is also possible to fulfill one of the tasks of the essence of the lawyer; this is to work “for the good” or in Latin “pro bono”, considering it to be sufficient motivation for the members of the study to participate actively to give access to justice to people, non-governmental organizations and vulnerable groups or sectors that require it.
Examples of key clients for AZ: Airbus, Walmart Inc, Empresas La Polar, Mitsubishi, Thompson Reuters, Louis Vuitton, Mega Pharma, WOM S.A., Pharma Investi, Abbott Laboratories, Cushman & Wakefield, Banco do Brasil, Fox Latin-American Channels, Fila, Puma, Nokia, Grupo Secuoya, Hasbro Inc., Laboratorios Saval, Aguas Andinas, Empresa Nacional del Petróleo, Gasmar S.A., among many others.
