Michael J. Decena

Practice areas

Michael Decena focuses his practice on civil and labor law litigation. At DR&R, he assists in the firm’s corporate and tax departments, as well as with litigation matters.

Experience

He specializes in immigration and electoral law working multiple cases of dual citizenship, changes in American names and visas, rectifications and ratifications of civil registry certificates. Additionally, he has experience in the areas of Civil, Criminal Law, Criminal Law regarding Transit matters, Civil And Criminal Medical Liability, also in Family Law, carrying out divorces by mutual agreements, incompatibility of characters, Vapor Divorces, Determination of heirs, Children and Adolescents´ rights (N.N.A.), in cases of loss of parental authority, among others.

He has also carried out cases of damages for telecommunications companies and banks in litigation matters, claims on the validity of preventive seizures, gender violence, etc.

Education and publications

Michael holds a bachelor’s degree in Law, from Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD), where he also completed a master’s degree in Law and Administrative Procedures.

He has participated in seminars and congresses such as:

• The National Criminalist and Forensic Sciences Congress of the Institute of Criminology and the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, UASD; Seminar on Central American Community Law sponsored by the Central American Court of Justice and the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD).
• At the international level, he participated in the seventh edition of the Human Rights Congress, in Peru (Lima), sponsored by Universidad de la Libertad, which had the same conceptual framework offered by the United Nations Office in Santo Domingo; he was also part of the first National Congress on Legal Clinics and Strategic Litigation to raise access to justice through Fundación Pro-Bono RD. He also participated in the diploma of The Constitution and Laws of the Dominican State, sponsored by the Chamber of Deputies.
• He has done several internships in many public judicial institutions in the country and abroad. These include the Division of the Public Prosecutor’s Office specifically the Department of Crimes and Offenses against property at Palacio de Justicia de Ciudad Nueva, in the area of reading and analysis of processed files, discussion and preparation of strategies for litigation defenses and observation of judicial procedures. He was an intern at the Criminal Court of the City of New York as an observer of the programs “Access to Justice”. He was also an intern at the legislative branch (Chamber of Deputies), as an Analyst of Initiatives or Law Proposal; intern at Fundación Pro-Bono Dominican Republic, in the areas of Procedures, receiving, rejecting and accepting the Pro-Bono service, managing the guide and forms of the organization, research procedure and case building.

Affiliations and credentials.

He is a member of the Dominican Bar Association and the Dominican Association of Immigration Lawyers of Dominican Republic and is member of Rotary International’s Rotaract and Future Rotary.

Languages:

• Spanish
• English