Maria Garcia is an American lawyer who has practiced in São Paulo, Brazil, as a partner of the law firm Demarest e Almeida. She was admitted to the Brazilian bar in 1986, and her education includes the Southwestern Legal Foundation in Dallas, Texas, in 1987.
Education
Maria Garcia's documented United States education includes the Southwestern Legal Foundation in Dallas, Texas, in 1987. The foundation was established in 1947 by Robert G. Storey, dean of the Southern Methodist University School of Law, to provide continuing education on legal and law enforcement topics for legal professionals. Its programs included intensive seminars on specific legal issues and a multi-week summer program on American and international law.
The foundation moved onto the campus of the University of Texas at Dallas in 1974 but remained a separate entity from the university, and it stayed there into the late 1980s. It was later renamed the Center for American and International Law.
Career
Maria Garcia's documented professional career is in law in Brazil. She was admitted to the Brazilian bar in 1986, a qualification that allows lawyers to practice in Brazil through the Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil, the national bar association. She later served as a partner at Demarest e Almeida, a law firm in São Paulo.
Demarest e Almeida was founded in 1948 by the Brazilian lawyer João Batista Pereira de Almeida and the American attorney Kenneth E. Demarest, who began operating on Rua XV de Novembro in São Paulo that April. The firm stood out in its early years because its brand was valued above the names of individual lawyers. Over the following decades it grew into one of Brazil's largest full-service business law firms, now known as Demarest Advogados and headquartered on Avenida Pedroso de Moraes.
