History

The history of Lippert Advogados begins on November 16, 1964, when Franz August Gernot Lippert opened his law firm in the center of Porto Alegre, Brazil. He had graduated in 1961 from the School of Law of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, to which he would return years later—from 1976 to 2002—to teach civil Law.
The firm’s doors had just been opened when the young lawyer was challenged by a friend in the auto sales industry to study the legal aspects of a new type of contracting for purchasing cars—the consortium. And so it happened: a few months later, the first car consortium business open to the public in the state of Rio Grande do Sul became The search for innovative solutions, the attention to changes to the economic and political climate, and the competence to offer the best results to clients, present at the beginning of the firm's history, have followed Lippert Advogados’ trajectory for over 50 years.
Back then, in the distant 1960s, the legal strength given to automobile consortium businesses generated the confidence necessary for the firm to win over new clients and to launchpractices in different areas of law. The industrialization process in Brazil has changed the economic as well as the legal landscape. The firm, then called Lippert & Cia. Advogados, expanded its practice into the creation of joint ventures, since many of its clients had to acquire new technologies.
Also at that time, the firm conducted the first corporate spin-off in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The firm also seized new opportunities resulting from industrial growth, which required the legal structuring of relationshipsbetween Brazilian and foreign companies. In the same way that the so-called economic boom in Brazil allowed the firm to consolidate itself in different areas of law, the recession that marked the following years brought other needs. Foreign companies left the country, and many domestic ones did not adapt to the new times. The number of bankruptcies and reorganization procedures increased.
Later, in the mid-1990s, the privatization era led to the study of new legal solutions. In the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the firm participated in the privatization processes of the petrochemical complex and the telecommunications sector. Subsequently, the opening up of the Brazilian economy allowed new business models to be established, with the participation of foreign capital.
The restructuring of Brazil’s real estate market through the creation of real estate investment funds allowed small investors to include real estate investments in their portfolios. This new investor profile enabled numerous real estate projects, based on the availability of resources in the long term. In the late 1990s, environmental law came into play, allowing Lippert Advogados to build models and solutions within an innovative landscape. The changes imposed by the use of new technologies also caused the legal scenario to change. Thus, as in all of its trajectory, the firm has taken a leading role and built new legal credentials.