College of Business alumnus combines entrepreneurship with love of law to retain control

When attorney Richard Montes de Oca MBA ’00 decided to strike out on his own, leaving his position as assistant general counsel for Royal Caribbean Cruises last summer, he decided to put the MBA he earned at FIU to work and create a job for himself.

Attorney Richard Montes de Oca MBA ’00 grew up watching lawyers like Perry Mason on TV. After cutting his teeth as in-house counsel for Royal Caribbean Cruises, he decided to become his own boss and establish MDO Partners in 2011.

“Being in-house can lead to a rewarding career – you can retire comfortably,” the College of Business Administration alumnus said, “but after a while, I started wondering what was the next challenge.”

Launching your own business is risky these days, but that’s how MDO Partners (“MDO” stands for Montes de Oca) came to be. Montes de Oca describes MDO as a boutique law firm specializing in corporate real estate and immigration law, as well as global compliance and business ethics.

He has five partners in the practice, three of whom are based out of state, in Missouri, New Mexico and Tennessee. (He shares a Brickell office with Sylvia Gonzalez Perez, the firm’s corporate counsel.)

As managing partner, Montes de Oca admits this thoroughly modern setup has its disadvantages, but he is pleased with the results the firm is seeing so far. He is keeping the company’s overhead down and already has begun expanding. This spring, he hired two Coral Gables-based attorneys – including Panther Daniel Rios ’97 – to beef up MDO’s immigration and real estate practices.

“The biggest challenge is to get our schedules to synch up sometimes, but we have the technology to come together when we need to. We talk on the phone and email a lot,” he said. “I wanted to have the best attorneys possible, so location was secondary. At the end of the day, we’re all drumming up business.”

A lot of the MDO mostly represents midsize businesses, but, as the native Miamian points out, it also counts Mastech and Royal Caribbean as clients.

One of the things Montes de Oca says he strives for is keeping the work they do at the firm as “exciting” as possible by combining in-house and large-law firm experience.

“We’re definitely not the kind of lawyers I grew up watching at home or on TV, but I’m confident in what we’re doing and where we’ll be in three-four years,” he said.

Dream come true

For Montes de Oca, a legal career was always on the docket.

He grew up the son of a legal secretary who would take him along to moot trials from time to time. As a child, he also would spend hours watching lawyers like Perry Mason and Matlock doing their thing on the tube.

“That’s really how I became interested in the law,” he said. “I knew then that’s what I wanted to do.”

After high school, the 36-year-old pursued a bachelor’s degree in criminology and law at UF. After graduating in 1997, he returned to Miami and got started on his law studies at UM (he received a law degree in 2001). In the meantime, he earned an MBA from FIU – a move he calls “a great investment” – as he balanced launching a career with fatherhood (he has a 16-year-old son).

“Those years were fun, but also challenging,” he said.

Today, just like Mason and Matlock, Montes de Oca is doing his own thing, and he couldn’t be more satisfied.

“It’s worth the gamble to be in control,” he said. “I can’t wait to see what the future holds.”