Carlos Federico Osorio Montealegre, founder of Osorio Internacional
Carlos Federico Osorio Montealegre, originally from Nicaragua, is an attorney based in Miami, Florida, and founder of Osorio Internacional, a Brickell-based boutique law firm handling international litigation, arbitration and immigration with strong relationships with international estate planning and corporate attorneys. The firm was founded after Mr. Osorio had practiced as a partner in local international law boutiques. The firm has six attorneys, foreign legal consultants and advisors with admissions ranging from Florida, Spain, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. The firm has dual-licensed attorneys (Common and Civil law) and every attorney at the firm speaks at least two or three languages with native fluency.
Mr. Osorio graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy (’95), Dartmouth College (’99) and the University of Miami School of Law (’02). He has earned an advanced specialization from The Florida Bar in international law and is a past Chairman of The International Law Section of The Florida Bar (2018-2019). Osorio Internacional is an ILS sponsor and Mr. Osorio is the Chair of the Legislative Committee, heading a reform initiative of international service of process, Chapter 48, Florida Statutes.
He is tri-lingual (English, Spanish and Portuguese) and has practiced as an attorney in Miami since 2002, focusing on international disputes of many kinds, from international commercial disputes, trust disputes, shareholder battles, marital disputes, intellectual property disputes, to frauds, currency frauds and assisting in criminal investigations. He litigates in State and Federal Court and has been admitted to practice in numerous Federal District Courts in the United States. The common factor in his practice is that he attends quite often to the high-net-worth entrepreneur and family businesses from Latin America and Europe, many times referred by fellow Miami practitioners, foreign attorneys, and local chambers of commerce for major Latin American countries. He forms close relationships with his clients, stressing practicality, loyalty and foreign language fluency. Mr. Osorio is quite comfortable working with his clients’ trusted advisors – accountants, lawyers and financial advisors – in foreign languages, and forms strong referral relationships, both domestically and internationally.
Why did you become Board Certified in International Law? I am a multi-lingual litigator by training and experience but I also honor and value the transactional areas of practice of international law, including corporate and estate planning. My mentors all practiced in those fields and I rose to partner in an environment where client demands covered multiple international disciplines. You could never just call yourself a “litigator” with the foreign clients or foreign counsel: you needed to be prepared to discuss any topic with your high-net worth foreign client, knowing your limits and bringing in specialists as needed. Over time I was exposed to other areas of international law practice such as immigration, real estate, international family law, criminal defense, trade law, and international probate, to name some but not all of the members of the international law “tent”. When I was Chair of the Section, one of my aims was to try to bring in more members from this tent and for that reason I co-founded the ILS Lunch-and-Learn series which has proven to be an on-going success. From my exposure to all of these areas of international law, I realized that I needed to challenge myself to obtain the international certification in order to truly call myself an international law specialist since the tough certification exam covers these disciplines.
What are some benefits you received from being Board Certified? I have found that foreign attorneys and clients value the certification and it has provided me with an edge in securing retention by clients. I have also been hired as co-counsel in certain cases to specifically handle international law issues.
Any best tips or advice to ILS Members preparing for the Certification Exam? Be guided in your studies by someone who has taken and passed the test.
To learn more about being Board Certified in International Law, visit https://www.floridabar.org/about/cert/cert-applications-and-requirements/ or email Carlos at cosorio@osorioint.com.
