FACIO & CAÑAS follows the business.

A law firm opens an office near a beach. The obvious explanation is lifestyle. In the case of FACIO & CAÑAS, the more useful explanation is demand. In March 2023, the Costa Rican firm opened in Playa Conchal and Santa Teresa, bringing a practice founded in 1942 closer to clients doing business along the coast. The interesting question is what an established firm learns when it changes its address.

The firm’s work includes corporate transactions, tax, property, employment, intellectual property and disputes. That range matters because a business rarely presents its problems in the tidy categories printed on a lawyer’s biography. Buying a company can also mean inheriting its employment practices. Developing property can bring regulatory questions. The client needs a decision; the legal specialties are the machinery behind it.

The coast was a demand signal

Playa Conchal is in Guanacaste; Santa Teresa is in Puntarenas. The firm’s expansion announcement described both as active locations for foreign business. Rather than serve those clients entirely from San José, it paired lawyers in the new locations with its capital-based team. The branches put a physical presence beside an existing pool of expertise.

“We have seen a definitive increase in demand for our services in these locations.”

Sergio Solera · Managing Partner · 2023

There is a practical distinction here. Opening an office because a place looks promising is a bet on future customers. Opening after existing customers ask for more help is a response to an observed market. Solera’s account supports the second interpretation. It gives other service businesses something useful to copy: look for a recurring concentration of work before adding another address.

A coffee deal needs more than coffee lawyers

Consider BIA COFFEE’s acquisition of Café Rey. In a February 2024 interview, corporate partner Federico Rucavado described a transaction that drew on M&A, corporate, competition, employment, public, environmental and litigation expertise. The everyday product was coffee. The legal assignment crossed much of the firm.

Rucavado also identified a recurring obstacle: target companies that had operated without specialist advice could contain liabilities their owners did not know existed. Discovering those problems during an acquisition extended negotiations. The implied lesson for an owner is straightforward. Getting the paperwork reviewed before a sale can make the eventual conversation less surprising.

The customer list is correspondingly varied. IFLR identifies Boston Consulting Group, Conair, GlaxoSmithKline, Nevro Corporation and Vertiv among the firm’s clients. Its description covers structuring, acquisitions and project development, including work for buyers and sellers. This is a business-to-business advisory practice serving companies whose legal needs extend beyond a single filing. Legal 500 also describes ongoing employment support for Griffith Foods, from contract reviews to workplace policies and disciplinary questions. Much of the work sits in the ordinary decisions that keep a company operating.

The $300 experiment

The firm also tried a different way to distribute knowledge. In June 2016, its tax division, Faycatax, presented Impositus 2.0: an online service combining tax research, explanatory material, calculation tools and expert chats. The reported annual launch price was $300 for two logins. That figure belongs to 2016; it is a historical product price.

The intended audience stretched from financial directors and accountants to lawyers, academics and students. The proposition was access to organised, interpreted material in a field where administrative decisions and court interpretations keep changing. Some calculator functions were still being built at launch. A subscription gave users another route into specialist knowledge alongside an individual legal engagement.

There is an obvious boundary to the idea. A research library can help someone understand a question, but the circumstances of a live transaction still need examination. The opportunity for another expert business is to identify knowledge people repeatedly need, organise it well and give them a usable way to reach it.

A network, not a foreign branch

FACIO & CAÑAS is rooted in Costa Rica while participating in Lex Mundi, TerraLex and WTS Global. These relationships connect independent practices. They should not be mistaken for a chain of offices owned by the Costa Rican firm. For a client with work across borders, they provide connections to lawyers in other jurisdictions.

The expertise travels through publications, too. Its lawyers contributed Costa Rica material to Lex Mundi’s data privacy guide, updated in August 2025, and its TMT and Cyber Guide, updated that October. Those contributions show specific areas of knowledge being shared through the network, beyond the membership badge.

What experience has to earn

History supplies context rather than a purchase recommendation. The practice traces its origins to Rodrigo Facio and Gonzalo Facio; Fernando Fournier and Alberto Cañas later became part of its story. Today’s buyers can examine practice-specific evidence. Chambers Global 2026 places tax in Band 1, dispute resolution in Band 2, and corporate/M&A and intellectual property in Band 3.

Its competitive set includes firms such as Arias, BLP and Consortium Legal. The relevant choice depends on the assignment, the lawyers doing it and the proposed engagement. FACIO & CAÑAS’s case rests on the combination of specialties, domestic presence and international relationships, with tax receiving particularly strong recognition in that Chambers edition.

The firm’s own working environment has changed, too. It reports an inclusion commission established in 2022, pro bono commitments and Great Place to Work certification since 2024. These are concrete commitments a prospective colleague can ask about. Together with the coastal offices and the tax platform, they suggest an institution still making choices about how it works. Eight decades create a history. Decisions made now determine whether clients have a reason to return.