Chilean law firms Molina Ríos and Ovalle & Bulnes merge

After working together for international clients and after months of negotiations, Esteban Ovalle, Victor Ríos Salas, Carlos Molina Zaldívar, José Tomás Bulnes and Felipe Correa, the leading partners of the new, resulting firm, announced the merger, which creates a firm specialized in litigation, arbitration and infrastructure and construction projects.

The new firm will launch in early 2024 with the whole team migrating to the same office, the new firm was quoted by local media as saying.

The merger obeys the fact that both firms complement each other and have worked together in the past. Ovalle & Bulnes is a firm dedicated to litigation and arbitration, a focus shared by Molina Ríos, but which also focuses on assisting clients in large-scale project development.

Leading partner José Tomás Bulnes told local media that this moment is the correct one for the fusion, given that both firms are experiencing a positive time, and that the merger will prove a stimulus to both firms’ growth.

“We feel that we can be much stronger together,” Bulnes said. The merger is based on the fact that both firms want to improve their current position within the local legal market, and also internationalize, he added.

He said that the idea behind the merger is to create Chile’s largest and strongest litigation and arbitration practice.

For his part, Felipe Correa commented that the significance of the merger is that this is the first time two litigation and arbitration firms in Chile unite to create one large firm.

The new firm will create a team of more than 30 lawyers, and which will then be better positioned to grow, the lawyers were quoted by local media as saying.