FABIO J. GUZMÁN-ARIZA is the Senior Partner of the firm. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S., 1973) and the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (LL.B., summa cum laude, 1981) where he headed his law class. Mr. Guzmán-Ariza is a former Professor of Civil Law and Dean of the Law Faculty at the Universidad Católica Nordestana. He is presently a member of the Board of Trustees of the University. In 1987, he was elected Judge of the Disciplinary Committee of the Dominican Bar Association (Colegio de Abogados de la República Dominicana). Mr. Guzmán-Ariza is the Editor-in-Chief and Director of Publications of Gaceta Judicial, the leading legal journal and publisher in the Dominican Republic.

Mr. Guzmán-Ariza has written extensively on Dominican law, specially in the areas of Civil Procedure (Litigation), Civil Law, Real Estate Law and Company Law. He is a regular columnist on Civil Procedure and Legal Writing in Gaceta Judicial and has published numerous articles in local and foreign law journals. He is the author of El procedimiento en defecto en materia civil y commercial (The Procedure by Default in Civil and Commercial Matters), The Encomienda in Hispaniola and New Spain, Memorias de un abogado de pueblo (Memoirs of a Small-Town Lawyer), Modelos para la práctica societaria (Company Forms); La Ley 108-05 de Registro Inmobiliario Comentada, Anotada y Concordada con sus Reglamentos (Real Property Registration Law 108-05 Annotated); and La Ley 5038 de 1958 sobre Condominios y su Formulario, Comentada, Anotada y Concordada con la Ley 108-05 de Registro Inmobiliario (Condominium Law 5038 Annotated).

As a pro-bono consultant, Mr. Guzmán-Ariza has served for more than a decade as the host and moderator of the DR1 Legal Forum (www.dr1.com/forums), the oldest and most popular legal forum available in the internet on Dominican law. He has also contributed for many years in the preparation of the surveys on property registration, contract enforcement, commercial litigation and labor law, done by the World Bank for the annual Doing Business Report, which provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 181 economies across the world. More recently, he has reviewed from a linguistic standpoint the drafts of the Criminal Code and the new proposed Dominican Constitution at the request of the Congress of the Dominican Republic.

As a law practitioner, Mr. Guzmán-Ariza has long and in-depth experience in servicing the needs of the international investor in the Dominican Republic, especially in the areas of Real Estate Law, Civil Law, Litigation, and Business and Company Law. He has also served extensively as an expert on Dominican law before courts in the United States and Europe, submitting affidavits on Dominican legal issues or appearing personally at foreign courts.

Mr. Guzmán-Ariza speaks Spanish, English and French.