Cheryl Ann L. Pena

Cheryl Ann L. Peña was admitted to the Philippine Bar on May 2002. She joined the Firm as an Associate on November 2001and was promoted to Senior Associate by October 2005. While her practice covers a wide and diverse array of legal issues, she mostly specializes in labor relations, criminal and civil litigation, and persons and family relations law. She provides legal advice to Philippine and multinational clients and is responsible for research, writing, and preparation of legal opinions, contracts, due diligence reports, commercial documents, and pleadings filed with various judicial and quasi-judicial tribunals, where she also appears as counsel for trial and oral argument. In the field of labor and industrial relations, Ms. Peña has extensive experience in preventive mediation, compulsory and voluntary arbitration, strike management, labor dispute resolution, and illegal termination cases. She has also assisted Philippine and multi-national corporate clients in the formulation and drafting of employment contracts, employment handbooks and manuals, and codes of discipline. Her corporate practice, on the other hand, includes the conduct of legal audits and the preparation of due diligence reports for various corporate clients, with particular focus on labor and employment matters, court litigation and exposure, and environmental and local government compliance issues. She has also recently assisted the Firm in handling clients engaged in the call center industry and labor outsourcing, rendering legal advice on problems unique to their industry. Ms. Peña earned her Bachelor of Laws from the University of the Philippines-Diliman in 2001 where she was honored for being the Most Outstanding Law Intern of her batch. She earlier received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of the Philippines-Manila in 1997, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude, class valedictorian, Most Outstanding Student, and with a Best Thesis award for her paper on Child Labor in the Philippines. She is currently a member of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines Manila IV Chapter, University of the Philippines Women Lawyers’ Circle (WILOCI), the International Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the Pi Gamma Mu International Social Science Honor Society, and the Lectors and Commentators Group of the Sto. Niño de Paz Community (Greenbelt Chapel). During her free time, Cheryl loves being with her family and friends, traveling around the world, SCUBA diving, swimming laps, and playing a vigorous game of badminton. She is a certified Open Water Diver, an amateur non-scientific stargazer, and a self-confessed roller-coaster junkie with a penchant for collecting snow globes and books (not remotely related to the practice of law).