M. Cristina Cárdenas focuses her practice on international litigation and arbitration. Her experience includes the representation of U.S. and Latin American corporate clients in a variety of business related disputes, including disputes involving distributorship, manufacturing, and other agreements.

Cárdenas’ most recent notable experience includes successfully serving as co-counsel to a Latin American licensee that was awarded $52.6 Million as well as attorneys’ fees in an international arbitration, the litigation of which involved parallel litigation in five different courts in the U.S., Brazil and Argentina. She also recently successfully defended a U.S. bank against claims of negligence arising from the bank’s handling of certified checks, obtaining a judgment of involuntary dismissal and an award of attorneys’ fees and costs on behalf of the bank.

Cárdenas has lived, studied, and traveled extensively throughout Europe and Latin America. She is fully bilingual in Spanish, which enables her to coordinate with and oversee the work of local counsel in Latin American jurisdictions. Cárdenas is also conversant in French.

She received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a double major in Political Science and Latin American Studies.

Cárdenas obtained her J.D. from the University of Florida, where she was a Legal Research and Writing and Appellate Advocacy Teaching Fellow. Also during her law school career, Cárdenas served as Executive Research Editor and Assistant Editor in Chief of the Florida Journal of International Law, which published her article, The Colombian Peace Process: The Continuous Search for Peace, 15 Fla. J. Int'l L. 273 (2002). While in law school, Cárdenas pursued a concentration in international commercial transactions with the University Of Montpellier College Of Law in France.

Following her graduation from law school, Cárdenas obtained an LL.M. in International Law from the University of Miami, where she concentrated her studies in international litigation and arbitration, including investor-state arbitrations.

Admitted to practice before the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Middle Districts of Florida and all Florida state courts, Cárdenas is a member of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association as well as the International Law and Young Lawyers Sections of the Florida Bar.