SENIOR PARTNERS
Ronaldo B. Zamora
First elected to the legislature in 1978, he has introduced and advanced the passage of numerous laws of national importance. In the Eighth and Ninth Congress, he sponsored such landmark laws as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, the establishment of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the law creating the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao; and the creation of Mandaluyong as a highly urbanized city. He has sponsored bills and resolutions defining impeachment, rendering the highest public officials accountable to the people; encouraging political and electoral reforms; promoting local autonomy; expanding the salary standardization program of school teachers, soldiers and policemen; strengthening the protection given subdivision and condominium buyers; promoting low-cost housing as the primary component of a national shelter program; and providing better health care for residents of his district and Metro Manila.
From 1992 in the Eighth Congress to 24 July 1994 in the Ninth, he was Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, when he resigned over policy differences with the ruling party. He later became the Minority Floor Leader of the House, and national spokesperson of the opposition party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition. He was the Executive Secretary of the administration of President Joseph Ejercito Estrada.
Education: Doctor of Public Administration, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Honoris Causa, 2002; First Place, 1969 Bar Examinations; Bachelor of Laws (L.L.B) University of the Philippines, College of Law Magna Cum Laude, Valedictorian, 1969; and Bachelor of Arts University of the Philippines, College of Arts and Sciences Magna Cum Laude, 1965.
Napoleon J. Poblador
Mr. Poblador is the Managing Partner of the Firm. He obtained his Master of Laws in 1989 at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A., and his Bachelor of Laws, Magna Cum Laude (Class Valedictorian) in 1983 at the College of Law, University of the Philippines, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Philippine Collegian in 1982-1983 and, concurrently, the Editor-in-Chief and chairman of the Editorial Board of the Philippine Law Journal. Admitted to the Philippine Bar in 1984, he specializes in civil, commercial and corporate litigation, corporate and securities law, special projects, and business organization and reorganization. He also has extensive experience in public interest law, handling high-profile political and constitutional law cases. He has been chosen by Asia Law Profiles, a Euromoney publication, as a leading litigation lawyer in the Philippines. He has served as director, chief legal counsel and corporate secretary of various corporations.
Early on as a trial lawyer, Mr. Poblador was right in the thick of complex and eminent legal advocacies. As lead counsel for the National Power Corporation, he secured for the controversial Bataan Nuclear Power Plant the first and only operating license ever issued by the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission against heavy legal and political opposition. He was also part of the legal team that obtained a Writ of Habeas Corpus for Senator Juan Ponce Enrile in a 1990 landmark case where the Supreme Court set aside the criminal charge of Rebellion Complex.
From the late 1990s and in the ensuing decade, Mr. Poblador was active in corporate mergers and acquisitions, handling various privatization deals, like the multi-billion peso purchase by a Malaysian conglomerate of the country’s only fully integrated steel mill, the National Steel Corporation. He continued, at the same time, to figure in various intra-corporate and other commercial disputes for many companies and handled cases for insolvency and corporate rehabilitation and liquidation, involving financially distressed corporate giants, like the EYCO Group and the UNIWIDE Group.
Mr. Poblador also played a prominent role in celebrated public interest cases, especially as principal legal adviser for the prosecution team of the opposition party in the thwarted impeachment of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo before the 13th Congress in 2005, as well as in the successful defense of Philippine Marines Gen. Francisco Gudani and then Lt. Col. Alexander Balutan who, for defying presidential orders not to testify before the Philippine Senate on electoral anomalies during the presidential election of 2004, were wrongly court-martialed for the offense of willfully disobeying a superior officer under the Articles of War. His spirited defense led to the acquittal of a principal accused in the Dacer-Corbito Double Murder case.
Mr. Poblador’s Harvard Law School, Master of Laws thesis entitled, “The Tort of Bad Faith Breach as an Emerging Theory of Lender Liability: Exploring Philippine Analogues of the California and Montana Doctrines,” was published in the Philippine Law Journal in 1988 (63 Philippine Law Journal 1). He was selected for but waived the De Witt Fellowship Grant for the Master of Laws Program of the University of Michigan Law School for school year 1988-1989, opting instead for the Master of Laws program of Harvard Law School. He is a member of the Scintilla Juris Fraternity and served as Vice-Chancellor from 1982 to 1983 and as member from 1979 to 1983 of the Order of the Purple Feather, the official honor society of the U.P. College of Law. He obtained his Bachelor of Science, Major in Biology, from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Cum Laude, in 1978. Before taking up law, he passed and completed one schoolyear in the U.P. College of Medicine. He was also a U.P.-Government Scholar of U.P. in Diliman from 1974 to 1978. He completed secondary education in Philippine Science High School in 1974.