How to find the right Costa Rica Attorney?

Yes, you will find many answers for this eternal question on the web, but they were written by pseudo experts generally expats that believe that now that they have 2 years in Costa Rica, they can act as gurus, but guess what most of them are more confused than the first time visitor, with a deformed picture of Costa Rica, they tend to create their vision based on a their limited number of Costa Rican acquaintances.

Because of the fundamental role, that attorneys play in all societies, Costa Rica is no exception, in general good faith reigns among lawyers but as anywhere in the world you will find inescrupulous attorneys at law also, a great thing is that they are the exception.

Your selection of the right lawyer will determine in great extent your success or failure in Costa Rica, that is the reason that we have taken time of a Sunday to point out essential considerations that every foreigner should consider prior to selecting legal counsel in Costa Rica.

1. Before analyzing any other aspect, make sure that the person that you contacted is really a lawyer, how? If you are in his office try to see that in his office he or she exhibits both diplomas as a lawyer he or she should have two, (1) Bachiller en Derecho (Bachellors in Law) and (2) Licenciado en Derecho (equivalent to a Juris Doctorate) if the individual claims to be a Notary he or she should have a third one that reads Notario Público.

If you will not visit the law firm, I would suggest you to request a copy of the lawyers id. card. so that you can determine if the person is really a lawyer that is authorized to practice by the Lawyers Bar in Costa Rica, you will determine the year of incorporation and the university of graduation.

With the lawyers id. # you can check online in the Colegio de Abogados de Costa Rica if the lawyer has been suspended before or not and the reasons for that.

Visit the link below to search for your lawyer:

http://www.abogados.or.cr/privado/busqueda/index.php

2. Make sure sure that the lawyer is completely bilingual. Many problems have been caused by foreigners that hire a monolingual attorney to save money and cause serious misundertandings that jeopardize their entire wealth and life.

3. It is highly desirable to hire a lawyer that graduated from the Universidad de Costa Rica Law Faculty. Why? With more than 165 years of history this faculty has had 17 presidents of the Republic. Because of the prestige that it has, 99% of the high school students that want to study law, apply to take their SAT equivalent test, however only the best are admitted due to limited spaces offered by the government. The rest that did not get in can easily enter any private law faculty, in most cases with less than 15 years of history and become a lawyer in less time than the UCR students. It is common word to consider many private schools as "garages" due to the poor infrastructure of many of them, lately private universities have advanced significantly in this field as the Costa Rica society has evolved from an agricultural one to a technocratic one in which people that in past years did not have the minimum intellectual requirements worked in the fields or in less intellectually demanding careers have now access to higher education, without in many cases the desired profile for fundamental careers for a society like Law, Medicine, Engineering, etc.

This is a reality that foreigners do not fully understand, it is not that we are saying that lawyers from other universities are less qualified, but the truth is that since our country does not have currently a Bar Exam to practice as a lawyer, the only objective filter that there is to judge the initial potential of a lawyer, is to determine that he or she was or was not initially admitted to study in the top school. Because of the lack of filters for key careers the country is currently facing a crisis of excess of supply of attorneys and many other careers, because as we said before people that before were destined to less formal activities are now attorneys, doctors, nurses, etc, this situation produces a degradation of careers that used to be prestgious and a symbol of status.

4. Now that you are sure that the individual is a lawyer, you can focus on determining other aspects such as:
-If the lawyer has additional education in areas of your interest.
-If the lawyer appears in prestigious lawyer directories that normally have at least minimum requirements to appear in them. i.e. martindale hubbell.
-and subjective criteria like how well he can communicate with you to transmit his advice.

Before we forget, there is another common mistake made by foreigners, it is normal to listen to a foreigner say that they decided to work with a lawyer because he or she was recommended by one of their Costa Rican friends, in this case many times they will end up working with an old friend of the family who never before has worked with foreign clients, and may not be ready for this, due to possible language limitations, or the common belief of inexperienced lawyers that think that foreigners are there to make them rich due to ignorance of real economic conditions of developed nations.

Please give us your comments on this considerations and on experiences that you have had or heard about this.