SCALAW is a full-service law firm which holds court in the prestigious Tektite Tower (formerly: Philippine Stock Exchange Centre) located in the Ortigas Center, Pasig City. Its main areas of practice are in General Practice Litigation, Civil and Criminal Law, Labor Law, Immigration, Commercial and Corporation Law, Family Law, Taxation, Insurance, Election Law, Banking and Finance, Foreign Investments, Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Telecommunications, Broadcasting and Information Technology, among others.

Established in 1996 by three (3) young lawyers/classmates from the University of the Philippines College of Law Class ’90, namely, P. Angelica Y. Santiago (+) (Atty. Chinky), Ponciano V. Cruz, Jr. and Jonathan O. Sarte, SCALAW started back then as a very small law office with a meager complement of twelve (12) persons, inclusive of said name partners, three (3) associates and the rest making up the secretarial, accounting, messengerial staff and one (1) receptionist. The modest goal at the time was to “inherit” and take-over the clients left by Atty. Chinky’s lawyer-father who had been appointed to the Judicial and Bar Council and to, along the way, hopefully add, cater to and service more individuals and small to medium-sized corporate clients brought in by each partner.

Thanks to the hard work, vision and innovations, technical and otherwise, put into place along the way by Atty. Cruz and the late Atty. Chinky, under the watchful guidance and learned counsel of former Supreme Court Associate Justice Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, SCALAW has since evolved to emerge and become one of the more prestigious and reputable law firms operating at present out of the Pasig City Ortigas Business District. Indeed, what started out as a compact and unassuming office has grown to become a formidable law firm, composed of four (4) partners, five (5) associates, four (4) paralegals and ten (10) other employees making up the non-legal staff, and which services clients ranging from corporations which are giants in the telecoms, broadcasting, power distribution and water supply industries to powerful politicians and prominent individuals in Philippine society. All these, SCALAW, has successfully achieved and continues to achieve without losing sight of and/or neglecting in any way its social responsibility to serve and cater as well to the legal needs of less privileged clients even on a pro bono basis, if necessary.

What also used to essentially be a Metro Manila-based law office with a limited geographical reach has, at present, existing affiliation agreements not only with several law firms in different regions within the archipelago such as Davao, Cebu, Bacolod, Romblon, Ilocos and Bicol but likewise with a law firm in New York City, New York, USA. In fact, SCALAW remains in negotiations with law firms in other areas, both here and abroad, in a bid to ensure an even wider reach and more enhanced capacity for the provision of its services to clients all over the world.

In the midst of all the aforementioned strides and achievements, SCALAW and its members remain grounded even as they pride themselves in having attained the status of a “Small law office with big clients”. Rather than losing themselves in the elation and lofty feeling that such a realization brings, SCALAW lawyers, paralegals and even the non-legal staff continuously strive instead to practice and offer impeccable legal services which simply boil down to professional, prompt, expert, quality, results-oriented and no-nonsense lawyering albeit in a personalized, caring, courteous, amiable and warm manner and guided at all times by the lawyers’ Code of Professional Responsibility.