Asertis Legal Group LLC delivers focused, business-minded legal solutions, protecting commercial interests & resolving disputes.
We ensure full labor compliance and execute essential notarial instruments across Puerto Rico with partner-level dedication.
Workplace compliance, employer defense, and policy drafting.
Strategic advocacy in breach of contract and business disputes.
Entity formation, commercial agreements, and governance counsel.
Public deeds, property transactions, and official affidavits.
Estate planning, asset distribution, and succession procedures.
Representation before Puerto Rico government agencies and boards.
Most business disputes we litigate started as a document nobody wanted to pay for. An operating agreement copied off the internet, a supplier arrangement done on email, a partner brought in on a handshake. Corporate work is the cheapest part of a company’s legal spend and the part that decides how expensive the rest gets.
We set companies up and keep them properly papered. That means the entity itself — corporation or LLC, registered with the Department of State, with the merchant registration and municipal licensing that follow — and then the documents that govern how the owners deal with each other and with the outside world.
For companies already running, we act as outside counsel on the things that come up between transactions: reviewing a lease before signing, restructuring ownership, bringing in an investor, clearing up minute books that were never kept, closing an entity that has stopped trading.
Puerto Rico is not an at-will jurisdiction in the way most states are. An employer who fires the way a mainland handbook says to fire can create a severance claim on the spot. This is the practice where mainland instincts cost the most money.
We work on the employer side. Before a problem, that means handbooks, offer letters, job descriptions and classification that match local statute — dismissal and severance exposure under Act 80, hours and overtime under Act 379, the Christmas bonus, leave accrual, and the changes the 2017 labor reform introduced for employees hired after it took effect. Federal law sits on top of all of it.
After a problem, that means handling the termination properly, responding to a Department of Labor charge, negotiating a separation, or defending the claim if it is filed. We would rather be in the room a week before the dismissal than a month after it.
The first question in any dispute is not whether you are right. It is what being right will cost, how long it will take, and what you collect at the end. We answer those three before recommending a course, and sometimes the answer is settle.
We represent businesses in the Court of First Instance and on appeal — contract disputes, collections, shareholder and partnership conflicts, construction and supply disagreements, and claims involving distribution relationships, where Act 75 governs when and how a principal can end a dealer’s contract.
Where a matter is urgent we move for provisional remedies early: an attachment before assets move, an injunction before a competitor finishes doing the damage. Where it is not urgent, we look hard at mediation first, because a negotiated close is usually cheaper than the discovery it replaces.
A notary in Puerto Rico is not a stamp at a mailbox store. Notarial practice here comes from the civil law tradition: the notary is a licensed attorney, authorised separately to hold a protocol, and the public deed that attorney drafts is the instrument the Registry of the Property relies on.
That means the deed is legal work, not paperwork. Before signing, the property is checked at the Registry, the description is verified against what is actually recorded, encumbrances and liens are identified, and the parties’ capacity is confirmed. After signing, the original stays in the notary’s protocol and a certified copy goes for recording. Errors at that stage are expensive to unwind years later, usually at the point where someone is trying to sell.
We handle notarial work as its own practice and as the closing end of corporate and inheritance matters.
Agencies run on deadlines that do not move. A response window that passes is usually gone, and the strongest argument in the world does not reopen it. Most of the administrative work we do is urgent for exactly that reason.
We represent businesses and individuals before Puerto Rico agencies, boards and municipalities — permitting and use authorisations, consumer complaints, professional licensing, employer proceedings, and the fines and orders that follow an inspection. Agency practice is governed by the uniform administrative procedure statute, which sets how proceedings run and how a decision is taken up for review.
When an agency decision stands, the next step is judicial review, and that has its own clock. We tell you at the outset which deadline is running and what has to be filed before it.
Families usually discover how inheritance works in Puerto Rico at the worst possible moment — when a house cannot be sold because the title is still in a name from two generations back. The procedure is not complicated. It is just rarely done until it has to be.
Succession here follows the Civil Code, which reserves a portion of an estate for certain close relatives whether or not a will says otherwise. That single feature is what surprises people who expect to leave everything as they choose, and it is the reason planning is worth doing while there is still time to do it.
On the administration side, we take families through the sequence: establishing who the heirs are, filing the estate return and obtaining the Treasury Department’s release before assets can be transferred, then the deed that divides the estate and puts the property into the heirs’ names at the Registry. When heirs disagree, or when one of them has disappeared, we handle that too.
Reach out directly to discuss your corporate, litigation, or notarial matter.