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President Noynoy Aquino has appointed Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Atty. Alfredo Benjamin S. Caguioa as the new secretary of the Department of Justice.
Caguioa replaces outgoing Department of Justice (DOJ) chief Leila de Lima who submitted her letter of resignation last week and is set to file her certificate of candidacy for the 2016 senatorial election.
Caguioa is a classmate of President Aquino from grade school up to college at the Ateneo de Manila University. He earlier replaced Eduardo de Mesa as chief presidential legal counsel after de Mesa was transferred to a government-owned and controlled corporation. His father was the late Court of Appeals justice Eduardo Caguioa.
Caguioa was a senior partner of the Caguioa & Gatmaytan Law Office. He passed the Bar in 1986 after finishing law at the Ateneo in 1985.
He joined SyCip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan in 1986 and was a partner from 1994 to February 2007.
He also taught at the Ateneo and San Sebastian College.
Caguioa has been cited as a leading Philippine lawyer in the Dispute Resolution field by Chambers & Partners in its 2010 and 2011 Asia-Pacific publications.
He specializes in litigation and arbitration. He has devoted much of his career to civil and commercial litigation before courts and quasi-judicial bodies of all levels, and to arbitration before various arbitration bodies.
According to his law office’s website, Caguioa has also “actively practiced before the different levels of the prosecutorial system, and has acted as private prosecutor or defense counsel before the regular courts and the Sandiganbayan.”
Photo: C&G Law website
This article has been re-published with permission from ABS-CBNnews.com.
