Charles Jay D DELA CRUZ

Introduction

Charles Dela Cruz is a senior partner at Del Rosario & Del Rosario Law Offices. His practice areas include maritime personal injury disputes, corporate commercial and employment laws.

Acting for Protection and Indemnity Clubs and shipowners’ interests for three decades, he has extensive experience in personal injury claims arbitrated in domestic tribunals and foreign jurisdiction including the US, the UK, Panama, Greece, Marshall Islands and Singapore, and has been tapped as a Philippine law expert in said legal proceedings. He acts as board trustee, legal adviser and corporate secretary to foreign-affiliated organisations, particularly Norwegian entities such as the Norwegian Maritime Foundation of the Philippines and the Philippines Norway Business Council.

In 2004, he was the youngest lawyer to assume the roles of the president and board chairman of the Maritime Law Association of the Philippines, and is now part of its board of advisers. He has also served as a member of the board of trustees (concurrently the assistant corporate secretary and co-chair of the maritime committee) of the Philippine Bar Association and of the Law Foundation of Makati. He was the vice chairman of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association insurance committee and a member of the Philippine Institute of Arbitration. He has been named in the A-List of Top 100 Lawyers in the Philippines by Asia Business Law Journal for two consecutive years.

Aside from legal advocacy, Dela Cruz imparts knowledge as resource speaker and/or chairman in international and local conferences, mostly on marine, logistics and employment law issues (some were MCLE-accredited).

One of his notable presentations dealt with “Marine Oil Pollution Scenario, the Philippine Setting” at the Inter-Pacific Bar Association annual conference held in New Delhi, India, in 2003. He has been invited by the National Conciliation and Mediation Board to lecture in their accreditation and retooling programmes for voluntary arbitrators, retired judiciary members, conciliators and mediators.

He obtained his law degree from San Beda College of Law in 1995 and his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from De La Salle University in 1989. In 2010, he participated in the University of Southampton’s maritime law and practice course held in Singapore.