On to Private Practice

Momsen's stint as Consul General was short‐lived, lasting only about a year. He subsequently decided to focus on his career as a private lawyer in Brazil. To that end, Momsen recognized that despite his Brazilian education, his Brazilian law license, and his Portuguese language skills, it would be impossible to accomplish this objective without working closely with—and learning from—Brazilian lawyers themselves. Beginning in 1919, Momsen started down a path that would make him and his Brazilian colleagues arguably among the most influential private law lawyers for generations to come. His first move was to establish a partnership with Edmundo Miranda Jordão and Pedro Americo Werneck, two highly regarded, domestically licensed corporate lawyers in Brazil.Footnote ⁶

Together, Momsen, Jordão, and Werneck formed a law firm that focused on litigation and corporate law. Such a move was extremely unusual because litigation was handled almost exclusively by solo practitioners (Gonçalves Neto Reference Gonçalves Neto2005, 29). It was also during this time period that Momsen began an interesting parallel career path. Along with focusing his efforts on corporate law matters, he decided to train himself on the nuances of Brazilian patent and trademark law. Brazil had been a leader in this area dating back to 1809, when Portugal's King João VI's government enacted legislation (only the fourth of its type in the world at that time) protecting intellectual property rights for his country and colonies (Barbosa Reference Barbosa2010; Malavota Reference Malavota2011; Economist 2012; Cruzeiro/Newmarc Intellectual Property n.d.).

Momsen saw an opening where he could become a cross‐border expert in a field in which he knew his corporate clients from the United States, who were expanding into Brazil, had a deep interest. While continuing to build his practice with Jordão and Werneck, Momsen spent the next five years becoming a patent and trademarks expert. Indeed, Momsen viewed corporate law and intellectual property law as inextricably linked. There were over two dozen US companies that Momsen represented in Brazil, many of which were exporting goods into the country that these businesses wanted sold—and protected from imitation (Momsen and Leonardos 1994).

Additionally, in 1924, Momsen was granted permission to sit for the New York bar, which he subsequently passed. Licensed now in the most important commercial market in the United States, Momsen began what would become a full‐scale international law career that would span the rest of his professional life. In 1924, Momsen opened a second law firm, but this time in the state of New York. He partnered with Leslie E. Freeman, who had served as a representative to the American Chamber of Commerce in Brazil. Their firm, Momsen & Freeman, sought to leverage both lawyers’ connections and client bases in the United States and Brazil in order to be a preeminent international law firm that was truly unique in terms of serving client needs.

Momsen clearly had a penchant for being an entrepreneur. Just one year after forming Momsen & Freeman, and six years after partnering with Jordão and Werneck, he entered into another critical partnership—this time with Simeon W. Harris—to form an intellectual property law firm (Momsen Reference Momsen1925a). The firm was based in Rio, and Harris, who was Brazilian by birth, was the son of a US couple that had migrated to rural São Paulo during the US Civil War. Little is known about Harris, except that he was born in the city of Americana, which was a haven for whites from the US South who continued to exploit slave labor (Harter Reference Harter1987). In Americana—as in other parts of Brazil—slavery had continued to exist and it was only in 1888 that the Brazilian government formally outlawed it (Harter Reference Harter1987).

Harris's own views toward slavery remain unknown. It is difficult to imagine that Momsen, a northerner from Wisconsin who so abhorred “bigotry and hatred” (Momsen Reference Momsen1912b), who was mentored by the abolitionist Ruy Barbosa, and who prided himself on being a polyglot and internationalist, would associate himself with someone who supported the horrors of slavery. But the archival data on this relationship are silent. What is known is that just one year after forming his firm with Harris, Momsen continued his entrepreneurial ways by establishing two more firms in 1926—a second corporate law firm in Rio and a new corporate law firm in the city of São Paulo (Momsen n.d.).

This second firm in Rio was a partnership Momsen had with Eurico de Albuquerque Raja Gabaglia and William Monteiro de Barros. These Brazilians were lawyers who Momsen befriended and were part of Rio's high society during this era. Eurico Raja Gabaglia, in particular, was especially influential and he later would become the president of the Instituto dos Advogados Brasileiros. Momsen also sought to expand his corporate law reach by moving north to São Paulo, Brazil's other key city of business, politics, and international commerce. In São Paulo, Momsen partnered with three Paulistas,Footnote ⁷ Arnaldo Olinto Bastos Filho, Manoel Carvalho Tavares da Silva, and Frank Harold Weiss. These three lawyers sat on multiple boards of corporations, including the Brazilian subsidiary of the Columbia Broadcasting System and the powerful Tratores do Brasil, S.A., the Brazilian subsidiary of the LeTourneau‐Westinghouse Company.

Clearly, Momsen had friends with great social, economic, business, and political capital. Moreover, this entrepreneurial drive only continued. In 1928, Momsen partnered with Walter Carlos Becker to start an office in Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul (Momsen Reference Momsen1928b). The firm Momsen and Becker founded together in Rio Grande do Sul engaged in corporate transactions. Such a plan would not have been surprising given that the state had historically been prosperous and a hub for industries—both domestic and international (Herrlein Reference Herrlein2000)—and many international clients with whom Momsen had relationships sought to work in Rio Grande do Sul.

By the end of the 1920s, Momsen's vision for legal practice in Brazil was becoming a reality—namely, to work intensely with local Brazilian lawyers in establishing specialized offices in major markets in which he and his partners could draw on their international legal experience to serve clients’ needs and earn substantial profits. In a little over a decade after leaving his post as Consul‐General, Momsen had established six offices in Brazil in three different cities, along with an office in New York with Freeman and an office in Buenos Aires that he and Freeman started with three Argentine lawyers in 1928 (Momsen Reference Momsen1928a).Footnote ⁸

Momsen did not create one mega‐law firm with different satellite offices, but instead, and uniquely, formed distinct entities that operated as independent partnerships. It is true that these offices would occasionally work with one another; after all, they were linked by a common founder. But they were each their own firm. Momsen made this choice partly because of the context of Brazil's legal landscape. Most lawyers then were solo practitioners, and where firms existed they were no larger than just a few lawyers (Cunha et al. Reference Cunha, da Glória Bonelli, Luci de Oliveira and da Silveira2007; Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013; interview with A. Boscoli and N. Rotenberg, February 13, Reference Boscoli and Rotenberg2014; interview with D. Trubek, March 25, Reference Trubek2014). Trying to build one large law firm would have flouted existing norms of legal culture, and it is unclear even whether such a move would have been permitted by the bar. Yet Momsen also chose this boutique‐firm route because it allowed the Brazilian partners at each respective firm to have a greater say in the operations of the business. Momsen recognized that he could not succeed without both intensely involving his local colleagues and delegating power to them (Brazilian Business Review 1959). This type of entrepreneurial, coequal, deferential partnership model existed perhaps nowhere better than with the patent and trademarks firm he started with Harris, but that made its imprint after 1927.

The Momsen‐Leonardos Relationship

In just the first year that it was founded, the Rio‐based Momsen‐Harris law firm served as legal counsel for the registration and renewal of more than 200 trademarks (Momsen Reference Momsen1925b). Momsen's ties to the two dozen US companies that were his clients—in addition to his presidency of the American Chamber of Commerce for Brazil and connections to local Brazilian businesses—help explain why this firm was so busy from its inception. This upward trajectory only continued as the firm added a lawyer who would become Momsen's most important professional colleague: Thomas Leonardos. Leonardos joined Momsen & Harris on August 1, 1927, shortly after he received his law degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Leonardos Reference Leonardos1964; Momsen and Leonardos 1994; interview with M. Leonardos, April 7, Reference Leonardos2014).

Thomas Leonardos was hired to serve as the head of the legal department at Momsen & Harris. In 1944, Simeon Harris died; subsequently, Momsen asked Leonardos to join as a copartner and the firm's name was changed to Momsen & Leonardos. Over the next six decades, Momsen & Leonardos would become the preeminent intellectual property law firm in Brazil. As a sign of the reputation and influence they had developed, Momsen and Leonardos formed an interest group in 1950, Associação dos Agentes de Propriedade Industrial, which worked closely with Brazil's first Patent and Trademark Office (PTO)—INPI—to shape public policy. For Momsen, it was crucial that clients who sought intellectual property protection have an influential lawyer within an organization that could advocate on their behalf to the government beyond standard administrative proceedings (interview with M. Leonardos, April 7, Reference Leonardos2014). This development underscores Momsen's immense social capital and networks within and outside of the state. That he was able to establish a good working relationship with the government, help create intellectual property law policy, and serve his firm's financial needs—but as he also believed, the needs of innovators and designers throughout Brazil (Leonardos Reference Leonardos1964)—illustrates the enormity of influence that he possessed.

Thomas Leonardos was also equally invested in the firm. He believed in growing the firm through the diverse hiring of professionals beyond just lawyers, which was unique for the time.Footnote ⁹ Engineers, accountants, physicians, and science and technology experts were all part of the firm (Momsen and Leonardos 1994). In addition, during the 1950s, Leonardos's three sons became partners. Luiz Leonardos was the only lawyer of the three; Maurício Leonardos was a chemical engineer and Tomaz Leonardos was a civil engineer. Later, in the 1990s, four other members of the Leonardos family joined. The firm also continued to expand during the next several decades. By the mid‐1990s, it had nearly 150 employees and had opened an office in São Paulo (Momsen and Leonardos 1994). Between 1996 and 2001, the firm nearly doubled in size, and over the past two decades it has been involved in tens of thousands of administrative proceedings (mainly in the trademark and patent areas) with the Brazilian PTO.Footnote ¹⁰ However, in 2012 divisions emerged within the firm and that year it split into two: Luiz Leonardos Intellectual Property Firm and Kasznar Leonardos Propriedade Intelectual.

As for Momsen, he departed Brazil in February 1964, one month before the military takeover of the government (interview with B. Momsen, March 4, Reference Momsen2014). It is unclear from the archival and interview data whether he left because he feared the political instability that was underway, or whether he simply wished to reduce his personal workload. (By that time, he was seventy‐two years old.) He returned to New York but shortly thereafter died after becoming ill from pneumonia.

In reflecting on all that Momsen established, interestingly not one of the above‐mentioned firms has retained his name to this date. The firms have either transformed into differently named entities or closed. Ironically, the most prominent and international of the firms—Momsen & Leonardos—during its split had as one of its main points of contention a disagreement on who would keep the Momsen name. (The parties agreed that neither would [interview with M. Leonardos, April 7, Reference Leonardos2014.])

By immersing himself in the culture, politics, language, and law of Brazil—and by working intimately with Brazilian lawyers, businesspeople, and state officials—Momsen established himself as a pioneering globalizer well before the twenty‐first century's era of globalization. Never mind that his name is no longer visible on the placards of the institutions he founded. His legacy clearly lives.

The Story of Kenneth Demarest

Demarest was born in the US state of New Jersey in 1897 (interview with S. Demarest, February 28, Reference Demarest2014). Demarest graduated from Princeton University in 1920, after having his undergraduate studies interrupted by his service in World War I (Princeton Alumni Weekly 1985). He then enrolled at the New York Law School and subsequently became licensed to practice law in both New York and New Jersey.Footnote ¹¹ But life was hard during these years. Bryant Garth (Reference Garth2013) has described the difficulty that Depression‐Era lawyers faced during this time, and there was little difference for Demarest. Moreover, coinciding with the crash of the markets in 1929, Demarest's father died, which placed the young Demarest in the position of having to support his mother and younger siblings (correspondence with G. Demarest, February 26, Reference Demarest2014).

With few prospects for attaining sustainable employment, Demarest eventually found an in‐house counsel job in the early 1930s with the Electric Bond and Share Company, which posted him to Brazil to work in its subsidiary in Rio, the American and Foreign Power Company (Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013).Footnote ¹² This Brazilian subsidiary was in the midst of a legal dispute with a rival industry, the Sao Paulo Railway Company, and Demarest was asked to focus his efforts on this matter. Family members’ recollections and existing data suggest that Demarest worked in Brazil for much of the 1930s, until he was called on to serve in the US Navy during World War II (interview with S. Demarest, February 28, Reference Demarest2014).

Following the war, Demarest returned to New York, where he took a position as a lawyer with the elite corporate firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher (correspondence with H. Chu, April 22 2014). He was at the firm for less than two years, however, before he decided to return to Rio in January 1947 to work as in‐house counsel for the company where he had been previously employed (Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013).

Demarest was ambitious and, like Momsen, he was entrepreneurial. Although Rio's legal and business markets had been expanding, Demarest saw great potential for growth in São Paulo. He traveled frequently to São Paulo and during one of his visits he met with a lawyer who would prove influential to him and to how the corporate law scene would develop in Brazil over the next several decades—João Batista Pereira de Almeida.

Almeida was a 1940 graduate from the University of São Paulo Faculty of Law. He worked at his cousin's law firm for a short time before leaving to serve as legal counsel for both the Federation of Industries of São Paulo—Federação das Indústrias de São Paulo (Federation)—and the São Paulo office of the American Chamber of Commerce (Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013). At the former, Almeida became friends with Manoel Garcia Filho, who was the director of the Federation and an important executive affiliated with the multinational company Goodyear. At the Chamber, Almeida became familiar with Demarest through Momsen, who was prominent within this organization in both Rio and São Paulo.

Over the course of the next several months, Almeida, Demarest, and Filho had discussions about how São Paulo needed more law firms to handle the expansion of corporate work being conducted within the city. In 1948, just one year after returning to Brazil, Demarest formally organized a partnership with Almeida, Demarest & Almeida, where both men sought to draw on their various contacts and past legal experiences to build what they envisioned would be an international, global law firm (Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013). Both Demarest and Almeida believed they could strategically complement one another to achieve this goal. Demarest's strengths were in his ability to network, form and nurture professional and personal friendships, and leverage his knowledge of US law and US businesses (interview with A. Boscoli and N. Rotenberg, February 13, Reference Boscoli and Rotenberg2014). He would eventually become the firm's main “rainmaker” (Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013). At the same time, his Portuguese language skills, while passable, were never fluent, and unlike Momsen, he was not a Brazilian‐certified lawyer (interview with S. Demarest, February 28, Reference Demarest2014). Almeida, on the other hand, was locally licensed and a well‐connected Paulista. In addition, he was a good day‐to‐day manager of the office, with sharp financial knowledge and the keen ability to judge local talent that the firm should hire (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014).

Nevertheless, Demarest & Almeida initially struggled. Finding clients beyond those who came from the Federation and the Chamber was difficult, and even more challenging was locating work that would be ongoing. There were few repeat clients and, as a result, reliable, baseline profits were low as well. As one lawyer who was hired as a junior associate by the firm in 1951 recalled, his wages at that time consisted solely of money to cover his food and transportation costs (Cristo Reference Cristo2013). Moreover, soon after the partnership formed, Almeida became terribly ill and was out of work for various stretches of time, which hampered business development and disrupted the internal administration of the firm (Cristo Reference Cristo2013; Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013).

The fortunes of the firm changed, however, with a shipping accident that occurred in the port city of Santos, just outside of São Paulo. One of the parties involved was the US oil company, Texaco. Texaco had been in Brazil since 1915, and by the 1950s it was a major supplier of petroleum products for the country's burgeoning auto industry (Chevron 2014, 3). It was during this time that one of its ships collided with another vessel; Texaco thereafter hired Demarest & Almeida to represent it on this case and on subsequent legal matters (Cristo Reference Cristo2013; Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013). The fees that derived from the shipping case approximated nearly $7,000—the equivalent of $68,859.09 todayFootnote ¹³ —which helped the firm stabilize its finances (Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013). Furthermore, there was an important reputational boost that accompanied the relationship with Texaco. Other US companies began calling on Demarest & Almeida to represent them. In addition, throughout the 1950s the firm's domestic client base grew as well (interview with A. Boscoli and N. Rotenberg, February 13, Reference Boscoli and Rotenberg2014). Indeed, by the end of the decade, Almeida was on the board of more than fifty US and Brazilian companies, illustrating how high in demand he was among corporate executives (Cristo Reference Cristo2013; Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013).

By the late 1950s, Demarest and Almeida had achieved their goal. They had become global lawyers with an international client base who had skills to serve the needs of those requiring legal services in more than one jurisdiction. In 1963, Demarest, who was sixty‐six years old, decided to retire and return to the United States. Although he was not particularly old and would live for two more decades, he left Brazil in large part because he had saved enough money to spend his remaining years residing in the scenic state of Vermont (Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013). The political climate (including the agitation of the military) and uncertain economic conditions within Brazil also played a role in his decision to depart (Demarest Advogados Reference Demarest and Cavalcanti2013). Finally, Demarest was emotionally drained. Colleagues reported that he was tired and that he felt he had “accomplished his objective” (interview with A. Boscoli and N. Rotenberg, February 13, Reference Boscoli and Rotenberg2014). In fact, during his retirement, he was repeatedly contacted to serve as a consultant on different legal matters, but he refused all professional work obligations (interview with S. Demarest, February 28, Reference Demarest2014).

At the time of Demarest's departure, the firm had five lawyers. This number might seem small, but in a country where almost all lawyers were solo practitioners, the presence of a law firm of this type was novel. As for Almeida, he continued to serve as the firm's leader for the next several years. He worked in tandem with Naum Rotenberg, the above‐referenced lawyer who was hired in the early 1950s, to lead the firm until 1975. During the first half of the 1970s, the size of the firm tripled. Thereafter, Altamiro Boscoli joined the two, making it a tripartite leadership structure (correspondence with A. Boscolli, May 4, Reference Boscoli2014). Boscoli was hired by the firm in 1965; he had completed his studies at the University of São Paulo in 1962, and then had earned an LLM at Harvard Law School shortly before joining. It was during Almeida, Rotenberg, and Boscoli's tenure that the firm became a powerhouse within Brazil's corporate legal market.

Boscoli and Rotenberg, who were interviewed together for this project, recalled that by 1980 the firm had between sixty and seventy lawyers and that over the next two decades it grew even more rapidly (interview with A. Boscoli and N. Rotenberg, February 13, Reference Boscoli and Rotenberg2014). By 2007, the firm had seventy partners, 310 associates, over 2,000 clients, and approximately 70 million dollars in revenue (Onaga Reference Onaga2007). (Since then, the firm has reduced its size due to a strategic decision to discontinue its mass litigation business, which resulted in approximately 140 lawyers departing [correspondence with P. Coelho da Rocha Reference Coelho da Rocha2014.]) Even though Boscoli and Rotenberg are seen as among Brazil's most talented corporate lawyers who transformed the firm into what it is today, they both attribute the firm's success to the “visionary” leadership of Kenneth Demarest (interview with A. Boscoli and N. Rotenberg, February 13, Reference Boscoli and Rotenberg2014).

In 2013, the firm dropped Almeida's name from the official title, calling itself simply Demarest Advogados. It had conducted a branding exercise among its constituents, and as a brand name, Demarest was how lawyers, judges, law students, and clients from around the globe knew the firm (correspondence with P. Coelho da Rocha Reference Coelho da Rocha2014). Given Demarest's own view that his success depended on the assistance of Almeida and the many other Brazilians with whom he worked, such a gesture likely would have made him self‐conscious—despite how fitting the move really was.

The “Advogado Americano”: Carl Kincaid's Story

In terms of age, Carl Kincaid was senior to both Momsen and Demarest. Born in Texas, in 1883, Kincaid was the son of a well‐regarded lawyer, W. A. Kincaid (interview with G. M. Vianna, February 27, Reference Vianna2014). The senior Kincaid was a justice on the Supreme Court of the Philippines (a US protectorate at the time). Because of his father's status and professional success, Carl Kincaid was afforded the opportunity to spend much of his youth traveling both domestically and overseas. He met professionals from around the world, and given that several other members of his family were lawyers, by the time Kincaid graduated from Yale College in 1908, it was a foregone conclusion that he would go to law school and then seek to become a member of the bar (interview with C. Kincaid, Jr., March 13, Reference Kincaid2014).

Kincaid studied law at the University of Michigan, although a records check indicates that he did not graduate (correspondence with B. Garavaglia, June 19, Reference Garavaglia2014). (Note that at this time it was not always necessary to hold a law degree to be a member of a state bar or a working lawyer.) In the early 1910s, he appears to have traveled to Manila to clerk for his father (correspondence with C. Kincaid, Jr., March 13, Reference Kincaid2014). Kincaid then returned to Texas where he took a job working in‐house for the Standard Oil Company (interview with C. Kincaid, Jr., March 13, Reference Kincaid2014). In the 1920s, Standard Oil transferred Kincaid to Mexico and then shortly thereafter to Argentina (interview with C. Kincaid, Jr., March 13, Reference Kincaid2014). In 1929, Kincaid once again moved within the region—this time to Rio, a city that he would come to love and adopt as his home for the rest of his life.

Kincaid thrived on being an outsider who was in Brazil to learn, absorb, and live out his desire to be a global professional (interview with C. Kincaid, Jr., March 13, Reference Kincaid2014). Moreover, given the economic climate and impact of the crash of the markets in the United States, he had little incentive to return home (interview with G. M. Vianna, February 27, Reference Vianna2014). Kincaid managed himself very well; he spoke both Spanish and Portuguese (and often mixed the two in conversations, which is known in Brazil as Portuñol). He developed friendships and important connections, including with Momsen, and overall acclimatized himself to Brazilian life.

The relationship with Momsen was special. Even though Kincaid was nearly ten years older, Momsen served as a mentor for Kincaid in how the latter thought about the law, the internationalization of business, and the ways in which to succeed as an American legal practitioner in Brazil (interview with C. Kincaid, Jr., March 13, Reference Kincaid2014). Momsen's contacts and his entrepreneurialism were inspiring to Kincaid. The savviness with which Momsen so nimbly operated taught Kincaid important lessons. Indeed, Momsen helped connect Kincaid with different clients—both domestic and international—and Momsen served as a key link in a relationship that Kincaid began with Demarest (interview with C. Kincaid, Jr., March 13, Reference Kincaid2014).

In 1932, after being situated in Rio for nearly three years, Kincaid decided to begin his own law firm. Recall that Demarest was working as in‐house counsel for a Brazilian subsidiary of a US company, and during this time Demarest served as a source of business for Kincaid (interview with C. Kincaid, Jr., March 13, Reference Kincaid2014). But Kincaid knew that in order to penetrate the Brazilian market, it would not be enough to rely only on connections to Americans; there needed to be a strong nexus with local lawyers and local businesspeople. He thus asked two lawyers with whom he had very collegial relationships to become his law firm partners—Rodrigo Octavio Filho and João Pedro Gouvêa Vieira (Vianna Reference Vianna2012). Octavio Filho was a prominent lawyer, literary critic, and high‐ranking government official.Footnote ¹⁴ He had immense social capital and was known throughout the country as a powerful, eloquent statesman with a brilliant legal mind (Academia Brasileira de Letras 2014). In addition to his legal talent, Octavio Filho's use to the firm was through the connections he had, while the day‐to‐day operations would be handled by Kincaid and Gouvêa Vieira.

Gouvêa Vieira was an ideal partner for Kincaid—but also vice versa. At the time he joined the firm, Gouvêa Vieira was a young lawyer who was seeking to gain legal experience and thus was willing to do the (often tedious and laborious) administrative tasks necessary to help make this nascent firm competitive (Vianna Reference Vianna2012; interview with G. M. Vianna, February 27, Reference Vianna2014). In addition, it helped Kincaid that Gouvêa Vieira came from a wealthy family that had political and economic connections, including his personal relationship with President Getulio Vargas (Vieira Reference Vieira1989). This was also an opportunity of a lifetime for Gouvêa Vieira. He was able to have the prominent Octavio Filho serve as a mentor while also working with Kincaid, who he viewed as a global, entrepreneurial lawyer (Vianna Reference Vianna2012; interview with G. M. Vianna, February 27, Reference Vianna2014).

The formation of this firm also occurred during a time when Rio was undergoing a major shift in its economy—a point not lost on any of these three lawyers. Prior to the 1930s, Brazil's economy was primarily agricultural, with coffee serving as the major export (Skidmore Reference Skidmore1999; Baer Reference Baer2001; Ianni Reference Ianni2009). But as Kincaid, Octavio Filho, and Gouvêa Vieira were establishing their firm, the industrialization process was gaining speed within the country, particularly in Rio.

These changes were fortuitous for the Kincaid Law Office, which assumed the formal name of Escritórios de Advocacia de Kincaid. A few years after the firm opened, it hired Antônio de Pádua Martins Britto. Britto was from the state of Piauí, located in northeastern Brazil (interview with G. M. Vianna, February 27, Reference Vianna2014). He was considered to be a brilliant litigator and someone who had worked as a clerk in Rio de Janeiro's Civil Court, which was the key judicial venue for the country's most complicated litigation matters (Vianna Reference Vianna2012).

Because of his government service, Britto was well‐known by the bench, bar, and the city's powerful politicians and civil servants. His decision to join Kincaid was a major coup for the firm. At the same time, however, Britto recognized the financial benefits he would be receiving as well. Kincaid and his colleagues were earning a great deal of money and had developed a reputation as the leading law firm in the country for advising on matters relating to maritime and shipping law (Vianna Reference Vianna2012). Britto joining the firm as a partner was therefore seen as a win for both sides.

Soon Britto became the everyday manager of the firm. He did not know English, so Kincaid decided to divide up the labor between them. Kincaid—in the vein of Demarest—took on the role of rainmaker, bringing in foreign clients to the firm (Vianna and Vianna Cardoso Reference Vianna and Mendes Vianna Cardoso2012). Kincaid was charged with generating the major revenue for the firm, while Britto played an administrative and logistical role (Vianna and Vianna Cardoso Reference Vianna and Mendes Vianna Cardoso2012). For example, in the early 1940s, the Brazilian government passed significant legislation overhauling labor laws within the country (see Consolidação das Leis Trabalhistas 1943). The firm had clients who sought both to benefit from these laws and to defend themselves against lawsuits. Britto was in charge of hiring lawyers who would cater to these needs, and to that end he recruited Brazilians who could practice in the courts as everyday litigators (Vianna Reference Vianna2012).

One of the lawyers he hired was José Thomaz Nabuco. Nabuco was skilled in different areas of Brazilian law, including in intellectual property, but he was an important hire for the firm because he sought to further accelerate the internationalization of Kincaid's law office (interview with G. M. Vianna, February 27, Reference Vianna2014). (Nabuco would remain with the firm for nearly fifty years, and in fact after he passed, his grandson would provide the office with a portrait of Kincaid entitled “The Advogado Americano,” which remains hanging to this day [interview with G. M. Vianna, February 27, Reference Vianna2014.])Footnote ¹⁵ Two other key people who Britto hired in 1956 and 1960, respectively, were João Batista Louzada Câmara and Antônio Carlos Mendes Vianna. Both were highly respected lawyers and were inspired by Kincaid and Britto's vision of continuing to make the firm global while remaining committed to assisting domestic legal needs (Vianna Reference Vianna2012). Louzada Câmara and Mendes Vianna helped usher in a new cohort of lawyers who moved the firm beyond its staple areas of shipping, labor, and litigation. By 1960, the firm had lawyers within it who were working on a range of transnational, transactional deals.

Sadly, however, two years earlier, in 1958, Kincaid had died. Because of his love for Brazil and the fact that he identified himself as a Carioca (a native of Rio), he requested his family to bury him in the nearby city of Petropolis (interview with C. Kincaid, Jr., March 17, 2014). Yet his dream of seeing his firm continue as a global enterprise endured. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the firm prospered and expanded its client base. In 1987, Mendes Vianna's son, Godofredo, was hired, and then three years later his daughter, Camila, joined (Vianna and Vianna Cardoso Reference Vianna and Mendes Vianna Cardoso2012). Although these hires reflected the traditional patterns of Brazilian kinship employment and provided a sense of continuity to clients, the children had substantive global bona fides and an international vision for the firm, which they gained through their legal and educational experiences abroad.

The firm today, Kincaid Mendes Vianna, remains among the most reputable in the country and has four offices, forty‐five lawyers, and more than 400 staff (interview with G. M. Vianna, February 27, Reference Vianna2014). Godofredo and Camila serve as key leaders, and they attribute the firm's eighty‐year history and success, in large part, to the strength, character, and foresight of the people who were there at the beginning—especially Kincaid (Vianna and Vianna Cardoso Reference Vianna and Mendes Vianna Cardoso2012).

Paul Griffith Garland

One person who became a major global lawyer during this period in São Paulo was Paul Griffith Garland. Garland was born in 1930 and after receiving his bachelor's degree in Spanish from Yale, he enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1952. However, Garland broke with the norm of earning his law degree in three years. In 1954, following his second year of law school, Garland applied for a nonprofit fellowship, which he won (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014). This funding allowed him to work in Brazil as a legal intern as well as to pursue academic studies within the country (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014).

The place where Garland received his first foreign employment opportunity was at Demarest & Almeida. At the firm, he met and worked with both named partners and had distinct impressions of each. For Garland, Demarest was an “inspiration” (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014), but he was also stereotypically American—someone who meant and did well but who did not fully assimilate into the country (by, e.g., not being able to speak Portuguese fluently) (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014). Almeida, according to Garland, “was good in the traditional areas of Brasilian law and wise enough to bring in specialists, case by case on more modern matters, such as tax questions” (correspondence with P. G. Garland, April 17, Reference Garland2014).

Following his internship in 1955, Garland enrolled at the Facudade de Direito do Amazonas, where he studied law within a remote, completely Portuguese‐speaking environment (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014). Upon completion of this abridged program, which had accepted his law school academic credits from Harvard, he received a degree and license to practice law in Brazil (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014).

Garland subsequently returned to Harvard where he finished his law degree in 1957. Thereafter, he took a position with the prestigious New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, where he was tasked to “work on all things Latin American” (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014). In particular, he focused on securities and tax issues and assisted US clients who were seeking to make inroads into South America (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014). In late 1958, Garland received a call from Russell Baker, a named partner of the Chicago‐based Baker & McKenzie (B & M), who was seeking to revamp his firm's Brazil practice (Bauman Reference Bauman1999, 181–83). Up until that time, B & M had a fraught relationship with a local Brazilian firm, and Baker consequently wanted to move forward on setting up his own office within the country (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014). He thus approached Garland—whom he came to know through a mutual friend at Sullivan—to serve as B & M's head partner in a new São Paulo office (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014).

Excited by this opportunity, Garland agreed to leave New York and move to Brazil in early 1959. Although he was only twenty‐nine years old, he was given free rein to build the firm in his own vision (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014). Among one of his early moves was to hire a Brazilian lawyer, Carlos Emilio Stroeter, to be his partner. Stroeter had earned his LLM from Harvard Law School, but had returned to São Paulo when Garland recruited him. Furthermore, rather than referring to the office as Baker & McKenzie Brazil, Garland intentionally opted to have Stroeter's name featured with his own, branding the São Paulo office as Garland & Stroeter (Matsuura Reference Matsuura2009; interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014). Given his fluency in Portuguese and his education at a Brazilian university, along with the fact that he had passed the Brazilian bar exam and felt “100% Brazilian” (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014), Garland believed that it made more sense to market B & M subtly—namely, through the highlighting of two locally licensed lawyers. (Garland noted that he kept the US B & M office regularly apprised of his activities in Brazil, and that this strategy he adopted would become one that B & M would replicate around the world.)

Over the course of the next ten years, Garland & Stroeter thrived. The firm grew from two partners to eighteen (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014). It developed an international client base, serving the interests of corporations mainly from the United States, Brazil, and Canada, but also occasionally from Europe and other parts of Latin America. B & M had secured its desired foothold within a market that it valued, and individually Garland and Stroeter became wealthy men (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014).

With the military takeover in 1964, the macropolitical situation changed. The military government was deemed by many to be an ally of the United States (Skidmore Reference Skidmore1999, 155–57), but there were elites within civil society—including powerful lawyers within the bar—who resented the US government's support of the regime (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014; see also more generally Skidmore Reference Skidmore1999, 160–66; França Reference França2009; Ferreira Reference Ferreira2012). By the end of the 1960s, strife seeped into Garland & Stroeter as well, as conflict emerged among the Brazilian lawyers and the founding partner (interview with P. G. Garland, March 17, Reference Garland2014).

By 1972, Garland decided to leave his Brazilian firm and B & M entirely and return to the United States. B & M retained its presence in Brazil through Garland & Stroeter, although the latter would take on different names over the years, eventually becoming what it is today: Trench, Rossi & Watanabe (TRW).Footnote ¹⁶

Ulysses Grant Keener, Jr.

Around the same time that Garland first came to Brazil, another US lawyer also made his way into the country. In 1955, Ulysses Grant Keener, Jr. began working as an associate in Rio at the firm led by Carl Kincaid (Stayton Reference Stayton1955:225). Keener, however, was different than the other US attorneys who had come to Brazil up until that point because he was born in the country in 1926 while his parents were serving as missionaries (indeed, Portuguese was his first language). Eventually the family returned to the United States, where Keener received most of his education, including his law degree from the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1951 (lawyers.com 2014). Following graduation, Keener practiced law in Houston, Texas—the state where Kincaid retained strong home ties. Through mutual networks, Keener learned that Kincaid was looking to expand his Rio office, and upon applying for a position he was hired by the Brazilian firm (interview with C. Kincaid, Jr., March 17, 2014).

Both Kincaid and Keener recognized that the latter was limited in terms of being allowed to practice domestic Brazilian law. However, Keener was not hired for that reason. Rather, Kincaid, who was in the later stages of his career, sought to mentor Keener and to train him to become a lawyer who could leverage his US ties and Portuguese language skills for the purposes of developing cross‐border business opportunities for the firm. Unfortunately, Kincaid died less than three years after Keener arrived and, shortly afterward, Keener decided to leave the Kincaid law firm.

Keener aspired to form his own enterprise. He thus joined with someone he had come to know, José Geraldo Garcia de Souza, in May 1959 to establish Garcia & Keener Advogados (Garcia & Keener Advogados Reference Garcia and Advogados2014). Garcia was a law graduate from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and he specialized in corporate law, maritime law, and labor law (Conjur 2004). Together, they both recruited a female lawyer to join them—a progressive move for the era—Lourdes Carvalho, who would be the firm's main tax lawyer (interview with L. Carvalho, February 27, Reference Carvalho2014). (Carvalho continues to work as a partner at the firm.) Keener's main duties for the firm were clear: to procure business clients from abroad who wanted to engage the Brazilian market (interview with L. Carvalho, February 27, Reference Carvalho2014). He was very successful in this role, courting companies like those owned by shipping magnate and billionaire Daniel K. Ludwig (interview with L. Carvalho, February 27, Reference Carvalho2014; also see Pinto Reference Pinto1986).

Over the course of the next three decades, Keener played a crucial role in growing the firm, in terms of profits, reputation, and size. Keener's adroit business skills, extensive connections in both Brazil and the United States, and eventual receipt of a Brazilian law license (Lawyers 2014) proved to be of great benefit for his Brazilian firm—and for his Houston‐based firm, Keener & Associates, which continued to operate and work closely with Garcia & Keener (interview with L. Carvalho, February 27, Reference Carvalho2014). Today, Garcia & Keener remains headquartered in Rio, but has expanded to São Paulo, Campinas, and Manaus, employing a total of thirty lawyers (Garcia & Keener Advogados Reference Garcia and Advogados2014).