Atty. Mary Christine S.C. Florete is the founder of the Florete Law Office in Iloilo City. She is a trained arbitrator in the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center, Inc. (PDRCI) and the Philippine Institute of Arbitrators (PIArb- pronounced as pie-arb). She is presently the co-chair for the Young PIArb (pronounced as pie-arb), a group of commercial arbitration practitioners, aged 40 and below, whose activities focus on the promotion of ADR in the Philippines. She is also an officer in the Philippine Institute of Arbitrators, Western Visayas Chapter.
Atty. Florete is currently a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) candidate for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the world’s largest anti-fraud organization and the foremost provider of anti-fraud education and training. Furthermore, she is also qualifying as an accredited Tribunal Secretary and is now an accredited File Counsel at the PDRCI. The Tribunal Secretary performs a key role in the complex structure of arbitration through conducting legal research, crafting and assessing procedural documents, drafting parts of award, and managing and organizing the tribunal’s files.
Atty. Florete is a results-driven lawyer whose litigation practice covers Commercial Law, Administrative Law, Labor Law, Criminal Law, and Family Law. She is a resource-person for the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE), where she lectures on a wide array of topics in Commercial Arbitration, including but not limited to the following pertinent core areas: Enforcement and Recognition of Domestic, International and Foreign Arbitral Awards, Domestic Commercial Arbitration, International Commercial Arbitration, the UNCITRAL (pronounced as un-si-tral) Model Law, government procurement disputes, and drafting of arbitral clauses.
Now five years in the legal profession, Atty. Florete also performs the role of coach and consultant to the West Visayas State University (WVSU) College of Law mooting team. Alongside this is her being a Law Review contributor to the same University’s college.
She was former Interim Chief Executive Officer of Cure Bee Pharmaceuticals in Iloilo City, a pharmaceutical start-up responding to the needs of an economy where there is a massive disruption in the supply chain of medicines and medical supplies caused by a global health crisis.
She was also an instructor for the Law of Negotiable Instruments and the Law on Sales in the undergraduate level.
Atty. Florete finished her Bachelor of Laws in the University of Iloilo. Her academic interests center in International Commercial Arbitration particularly arbitration for the financial markets and energy.
