“Mr. Lilla is a beacon, of a unique set of qualities.

Mr. Lilla adored being an attorney. He was a 100% a attorney, at all times. He would never come out of this role. For him, law is a continuing activism, it is endless. He saw no sense in a life in which he couldn’t work. Being an attorney was not an outfit he could take off or change. It was his skin.

“the lawyer cannot think of himself as more important than the client”

Because his profession was an immanent and permanent expression of his personality, he has always made a point of a truly independent practice. An activity that could be recognized as noble and worthy of the respect from everybody. Being an attorney is primarily to provide a customer service, but it can never be servile. In this stricter sense of service, “the lawyer cannot think of himself as more important than the client”; and in a clear equation, “wisdom equals intelligence minus vanity”. He would always ensure his clients would receive the best his intellect could offer; it didn’t matter if the diagnosis or the guidance didn’t match the ones the client would like to hear. Several times, he refused to work on something (negotiating contracts, filing lawsuits) that he considered detrimental to clients; He would rather ask them to look for another attorney than to settle for something he thought was detrimental to whom he had a mission to protect.

“wisdom equals intelligence minus vanity”

Mr. Lilla was deeply authentic. He had a crystal-clear clarity about his affections as well as his disaffections. He was never embarrassed to express them. He always tried to give everyone, without distinction, the truth of his feelings, either good or bad.

Mr. Lilla was a man of great generosity. He was delighted to open opportunities, especially for students and young attorneys, in whom he identified merit, effort and dedication to studies. For many, many years, he directly selected the interns for the firm, reviewed resumes and personally attended the interviews. With the internship candidates, he made a point of knowing who their professors were, what books they had studied in each subject, what their other interests were, and what other books they had read. He particularly appreciated those who, like him, were strongly engaged in the world of culture, had plans to improve themselves, and were dedicated to the continued study of law.

There is a remarkable number of brilliant professionals, attorneys, and law professors, who were somehow “offspring” from the firm that Dr. Fabio Lilla and his partners founded. He was thrilled to meet promising young people and had a genuine pleasure in opening doors to their development and recognition. That impulse was so strong, and so striking, that I don’t think it’s an overstatement to refer to an actual law school forged by him and his partners. He himself noted the existence of several other successful and valuable law firms which, to a greater or lesser degree, descend from the firm he and his partners founded, and which are aware to owe aspects of the model and guidelines that he and his partners conceived and followed. He founded with its partners a law firm with its own rules, distinguished from the standards of traditional law, and reflecting principles of freedom and equality.

By practicing Law, he went beyond Law. Due to his experience, vast culture and shrewd sensitivity, he had an unparalleled ability to read and scan people within a few minutes, anticipating and dissecting conflicts. Faced with the most complex situations, he was able to listen, and behaved like a skilled strategist. With terrifying speed, he accurately identified what was most important to the client at stake. From then on, he would define, with intelligence and courage, the way forward. With this, he achieved the ability to give advice that went beyond the field of law, because he understood and sympathized with the anguish of his clients, even the most puzzling ones. He made their concerns his own and came up with guidance that could soothe them. His guidance was decisive at key moments in the lives and businesses of countless clients. He created and maintained, with several of them, relationships of trust that continued uninterruptedly for more than forty years.

Even sharing his attention with teaching at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a position he held for over 30 years, he ensured the prosperity of the law firm without ever falling into any form of greed. He abhorred the idea of winning alone. For him, winning only made sense when shared among all who had given their best to the work, along with him.”

Luis Haddad