ABOUT
Rafael X. Zahralddin-Aravena is a business lawyer with 25+ years of experience advising businesses in corporate and commercial litigation, insolvency, distressed M&A, compliance, corporate formation, corporate governance, commercial transactions, cyber law, regulatory actions, and cross-border issues. In 2007, he founded the firm’s Wilmington, Delaware office which specializes in business law and litigation in all federal and state courts, as its first Managing Shareholder. He is an extensive writer and lecturer. He is the Co-Editor of and author of several chapters in the American Bar Association’s Reorganizing Failing Businesses (3rd Edition Rafael X. Zahralddin and Megan Adeyemo, eds.) (August 2017) where he co-authored the chapters on “Creditor and Equity Committees,” “Prepackaged Chapter 11 Case Considerations and Techniques,” “Fiduciary Duties Of Directors Of Financially Troubled Corporations,” and “Collective Bargaining Agreements, Employee Benefits, and Executive Compensation.”
Rafael represents clients in all aspects of bankruptcy and restructuring and has deep experience in international commercial law issues, including cross-border insolvency. He has also worked for two decades with early stage companies and venture capitalists and private venture funds as both a transactional lawyer and a corporate litigator. He has represented several companies in the energy sector, including the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. He is a business lawyer who works with companies on all aspects of commercial transactions and on compliance. He is a Six Sigma Green Belt and has lectured and trained in-house lawyers and outside law firms in legal project management, lean practices, and Six Sigma application to value-added provision of legal services.
He was a founding faculty member and Associate Professor for five years at Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California. Prior to becoming a tenure track professor, Rafael was a senior writing fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. He clerked for the Hon. Samuel L. Bufford of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California.
He has been recognized as a Top 50 Latino Lawyer by Latino Leaders Magazine, in December 2016, 2017, and 2018, has a Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent Rating, is a Super Lawyers Top Rated Creditor Debtor Rights in Pennsylvania (2019), is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a National Association of Corporate Directors Governance Fellow, American Bar Association Business Law Section Fellow, and a Leadership Council on Legal Diversity 2015 Fellow. He was also recognized by the Philadelphia Inquirer as a 2019 Legal Influencer.
