P. L. Casagrande Advocacia
Competition advice, recoded.
Specialist advice and representation in competition law and economic regulation, including the representation of companies and individuals before CADE in merger control proceedings, investigations into anticompetitive conduct and competition litigation. The firm also advises on the design and review of commercial policies and compliance programmes, as well as on matters at the intersection of competition law and sector-specific regulation.
All matters are handled directly by the founding partner, whose experience encompasses transactions of varying scale and complexity, investigations, the negotiation of settlements with competition authorities, multi-jurisdictional matters and the review of commercial policies across a broad range of industries.
The firm’s legal practice is supported by proprietary technology tools developed under the founding partner’s direction. These include SAÍRA, a legal intelligence solution based on RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and built on two principal knowledge bases: decisions and public documents issued by CADE, and an extensive collection of specialist literature. The platform brings greater depth, accuracy, grounding and traceability to legal analysis, while also helping to mitigate the risk of hallucinations.
Get in touch SaíraHandled directly by the founding partner
P. L. Casagrande Advocacia brings together a practice in competition law and in economic regulation, with experience built in the representation of clients before CADE in merger filings and investigations, notably in matters subject to review by several foreign authorities, as well as in a period spent heading a pioneering investigative unit within the Brazilian federal administration.
The lean structure is a deliberate choice of method: the founding partner takes personal part in setting strategy, in dealings with clients and authorities and in the final drafting of every document. Where a matter calls for additional resources, dedicated teams are formed and the work is integrated with economists, sector consultants and Brazilian and foreign law firms.
Direct involvement
The lawyer who conducts the dialogue is the same lawyer who analyses the matter, decides the strategy and signs. No intermediate layers between the client and the person answerable for the work.
Multijurisdictional practice
Detailed knowledge of the features, timetables and information flows of multijurisdictional projects. Local counsel before CADE for foreign firms, coordinating timetables and information across multijurisdictional transactions.
Economic and sector literacy
A deep academic grounding in law, with a multidisciplinary economic approach, allows competition and regulatory questions to be addressed as a single problem.
The firm’s work is organised around four main areas.
Merger Control
Advice on mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures subject to notification to CADE — jurisdictional analysis, risk assessment, pre-notification strategy, preparation of the filing and representation through to the final decision, including before the Administrative Tribunal.
Conduct and Investigations
Defence in cartel investigations and in matters involving horizontal concerted conduct, vertical restraints and abuse of dominance, as well as in gun-jumping proceedings; design and implementation of negotiated resolution strategies with the authority.
Competition Compliance
Design and review of competition compliance programmes, training, and day-to-day advice on commercial practices, distribution agreements and collaboration between competitors.
Competition and Regulation
Questions at the interface between competition law and economic regulation: preparation of submissions to consultations and public hearings held by regulatory agencies, participation in the Regulatory and Competition Assessment Procedure (PARC) of the Ministry of Finance, and analysis of the competitive design of sector rules.
The founding partner’s experience
In recent years, Paulo Casagrande has had a prominent role in transactions subject to prior approval by CADE. His experience spans filings under both the fast-track and the ordinary procedure, matters formally declared complex, cases decided by the Tribunal of CADE and transactions cleared subject to a Merger Control Agreement (ACC), with the negotiation of structural and behavioural conditions.
The sectors involved include technology and data centres, electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, civil aviation, payments, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, food, industrial goods, infrastructure and education.
Matters of public record
A selection of matters of public record that illustrate the type and complexity of the work handled by the founding partner.
Merger control
- Acquisition by a multinational food group of a local competitor in Brazil — complex review, with discussion of structural and behavioural remedies.
- Acquisition by a European aerospace equipment manufacturer of a producer of aircraft components — detailed ordinary-procedure review, conducted in coordination with the European, United Kingdom and United States competition authorities.
- Acquisition of the sole Brazilian producer of an industrial input by a South American competitor — complex review, with discussion of behavioural restrictions.
- Acquisition of a household appliances business line from a multinational manufacturer — detailed review.
Investigations and competition litigation
- Representation of companies in investigations into alleged participation in bid-rigging cartels.
- Negotiation of settlements with CADE, including leniency agreements, cease-and-desist agreements (TCC) and merger control agreements (ACC), among them settlements concluding investigations into alleged gun jumping.
- Defence of a multinational enterprise software provider, a manufacturer of aeronautical equipment and a crop protection producer in investigations into alleged abuse of dominance.
- Representation of multinational companies in investigations into alleged exchanges of sensitive human resources information.
- Representation in investigations into alleged gun jumping.
- Representation of a Brazilian company in an action to annul a fine imposed by CADE, and of other companies as defendants in private competition damages actions.
Regulation and regulated sectors
- Advice to companies and trade associations on participation in consultations and public hearings held by federal regulatory agencies.
- Regulatory and competition advice in telecommunications, infrastructure, electricity, natural gas, civil aviation and payments.
- Academic work on pro-competitive regulation of infrastructure, airport privatisation, competition enforcement in the electricity sector, structural control in telecommunications and digital markets.
References to professional matters are for information only, are confined to matters of public record and observe the applicable duties of confidentiality and professional secrecy. They do not constitute a promise, guarantee or indication of results in other matters.
Paulo L. Casagrande
Paulo L. Casagrande is the partner responsible for P. L. Casagrande Advocacia, and has more than 25 years of professional experience, combining private practice in Brazil and abroad with work in both the public and the private sector.
Career
Full-service Brazilian law firm, São Paulo
Early career, with work in corporate, regulatory and competition law.
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer — Brussels
Work as a foreign associate at a global firm; involvement in European merger control cases and in regulatory advice in the civil aviation sector concerning the international routes of a Brazilian airline.
Secretariat of Economic Law, Ministry of Justice
Establishment of a unit dedicated to investigating bid-rigging cartels, in cooperation with the Federal Police, the Office of the Comptroller General and the Federal Court of Accounts; work with the OECD Competition Committee, in Paris.
Competition law boutique, São Paulo
Senior associate and subsequently partner; antitrust transactions and investigations, telecommunications and infrastructure regulation, and the payments sector. Co-author of a competition law treatise cited in CADE decisions over the past decade.
Brazilian firm in international association
Partner in the competition practice, with work on notable matters in oil and gas, telecommunications and software.
Brazilian firm with a substantial M&A practice
Partner and head of the antitrust practice; cartel and abuse of dominance investigations, and significant merger transactions.
Brazilian firm in international association
Led the rebuilding of the antitrust team and sat on the global steering committee of the competition group of the international network with which the firm is associated. Was head of the Latin American Antitrust & Competition Practice between 2024 and 2026.
Education
Law — University of São Paulo Law School (USP), 1998–2002. Final dissertation supervised by Prof. Calixto Salomão Filho, awarded first prize in the 2002 IBRAC Monograph Prize.
European Master in Law and Economics, double degree — Universities of Hamburg (Germany) and Manchester (United Kingdom), 2005–2006. Full European Commission scholarship (Erasmus Mundus); visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute, Bonn (Germany).
Economic and Financial Law — USP, 2010–2015. Thesis on innovation, cooperation and competition, supervised by Prof. Diogo Coutinho and approved with distinction by an examining panel of lawyers and economists; visiting researcher at Fordham Law School (United States).
Academic exchanges at Yale Law School, LMU München and the Goethe Institut Berlin. Fluent in English, with basic Spanish and German.
Recognition
Contact
Get in touch
- E-mail · paulo@plcasagrande.com
- LinkedIn · linkedin.com/in/plcasagrande
SIFT newsletter
If you are in-house counsel at a company and would like to receive SIFT, our monthly bulletin with analysis of relevant developments in competition law, please send an e-mail to sift@pub.plcasagrande.com with the subject line “Yes”.
SIFT is the English edition of CRIVO, the monthly Brazilian competition law bulletin of P. L. Casagrande Advocacia. Circulated only to in-house counsel and to lawyers at partner firms who have subscribed. To stop receiving it, e-mail the same address with the subject line “No”.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
The firm uses proprietary technology tools built on artificial intelligence solutions as internal support for the work of the responsible partner, never as a substitute for professional judgement.
Among them is SAÍRA (which stands, in Portuguese, for System for Intelligent Legal Retrieval and Analysis), a proprietary legal intelligence solution developed to enhance the depth, accuracy, efficiency and robustness of competition law and regulatory analysis.
Based on the artificial intelligence technique known as RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation), the system enables natural-language research across previously selected and verifiable sources. This technology improves the traceability of responses, strengthens their reliability and contributes to the mitigation of hallucinations, meaning inaccurate or unsubstantiated information that may be generated by AI systems.
SAÍRA currently brings together two complementary knowledge bases. The first comprises public documents produced by CADE in recent years, organised into five specialised collections: legislation, case law, methodological guidelines, economic studies and institutional news. The second consists of an extensive legal bibliography structured through Zotero, containing more than 5,000 items assembled over more than 20 years of academic research in economic law by the firm’s founder.
This combination integrates documents reflecting the decision-making practice of the Brazilian competition authority with a bibliographic collection developed and curated over several decades, thereby bringing greater breadth, conceptual depth and methodological rigour to legal research.
SAÍRA operates primarily within a local architecture, under the firm’s direct control. The processing and organisation of documents are carried out on the firm’s own equipment, without the transmission of its knowledge bases to external servers. This design provides greater technological autonomy, control over information flows and independence from third-party infrastructure.
The system also applies a rigorous hierarchy of sources, prioritising legislation and case law while transparently distinguishing between adjudicative, technical, academic and informational content.
All tools are structured to secure confidentiality, reliability and efficiency, with constant human supervision (human in the loop) at every stage: analysis, strategy and final drafting remain, in all cases, the exclusive responsibility of the lawyer.
The solutions are developed and maintained in-house. No client information is used to train third-party models; the environment that processes case content operates within a controlled-access perimeter. A full statement on the use of AI is provided to each client before work begins.