Companies that expand here often arrive with mainland templates and find that half of them don’t fit. Puerto Rico’s private law comes from the civil law tradition, so obligations, contracts, property and succession follow the Civil Code rather than state common law. Employment sits under a separate body of local statute that is more protective of employees than most states. Federal law applies on top of all of it.

Notarial practice is the clearest example. In Puerto Rico a notary is a licensed attorney with a separate notarial authorisation, and a public deed is drafted, authorised and kept in that attorney’s protocol before it goes to the Registry of the Property. A sale, a mortgage, a power of attorney, a declaration of heirs — each of those is a lawyer’s work here, not a signature stamp at a mailbox store.

We practise in both languages. Contracts, filings and agency submissions are prepared in Spanish or English depending on where they are going, and we will tell you which one a document needs to be in.