Four senior partners from Siguion Reyna Montecillo & Ongsiako, one of the Philippines’ oldest law firms, have branched out to set up their own boutique law firm as growing foreign direct investment and a liberalised regulatory landscape bring more legal work to the country.
The founding partners of Khan Mercado Peña & Seña Law Office (KMAPS Law) are Rafael Khan, Rommel Mercado, Carla Santamaria-Seña and Cheryl Ann Peña. Khan handles employment law focusing on labour relations and negotiation; Mercado, a corporate and commercial practice emphasizing M&A; Seña, dispute resolution with attention to commercial arbitration; and Peña, employment law focusing on labour litigation.
The four partners previously advised clients like the country’s largest fixed-line and cellular telco, a Fortune Global 500 oil and gas company, a nickel mining operator, the Philippine unit of the world’s largest beverage manufacturer, a global consumer goods company, and a multinational defense and aerospace company with manufacturing operations in the Philippines.
Mercado describes their work as, “often finding ourselves advising legal teams which are certainly very able to handle a matter themselves but have determined they need that additional layer of specific insight we may be able to offer.”
The Philippines began opening up certain sectors to foreign investment towards the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rebalancing ownership restrictions to allow more international players onto its shores became a major state objective, with the government last year even opening up certain previously controlled public infrastructure sectors, including airports, railways, expressways and telecommunications, to 100 percent foreign ownership.
“It felt like it was time to establish an independent practice with our names on the door,” said Santamaria-Seña, the new firm’s dispute resolution practitioner. “There were difficult goodbyes but no hard feelings when we left, and we’ve maintained our personal friendships with our former colleagues.”
The Philippines’ legal market consists of very few large general-service firms with more than a hundred lawyers, a handful of midsize firms with fifty or more fee-earners, many small firms like KMAPS Law, with less than ten lawyers, and mostly solo or duo practitioners.
Peña sees their extensive experience with larger offices as a value differentiator. “Essentially, a client receives ‘big-firm’ quality advice from senior counsel familiar with issues facing a Top 500 corporation, in an accessible ‘boutique firm’ format,” she says.
The four partners say they feel “challenged” by their new circumstances but are eager to note that they continue to field many inquiries and have signed on several new clients - high net worth individuals and some large corporates – in their first three months of operation.
Short-term plans include expanding their headcount, with a long-term goal to eventually become a midsize boutique that offers full services in areas that Philippine domestic companies and MNCs most require.
