Legal roots run deep in family of Peruvian attorney with U.S. ties By Brian Cox
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n his law offices in the Miraflores district of Lima, Peru, attorney Juan Prado Bustamante laughs as he relates a story from his graduate student days about the value of exchanging ideas and experiences. He was earning a master’s in comparative jurisprudence at New York University in 1993. The program drew students from around the world and Prado was studying with attorneys from Japan, China, Germany, France, and elsewhere. At one point there were insufficient copies of a textbook that was required reading and the professor suggested students photocopy a few chapters until additional copies of the book arrived in
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several weeks that they could purchase. He remembers a student from Japan expressing concern that they may be violating copyright laws. “I joked if that was true, I would be in jail for all the books I had photocopied,” he says. “At that time in my country the only way to learn was to photocopy. There were only two or three books in the library.” His time at NYU and then at Boston University School of Law where he earned an LL.M. in International Banking Law opened Prado’s eyes to different perspectives on problem-solving. “You learn that whatever you think is not the whole,” he says. “You have to understand other ways of thinking and find ways you can live all together and share things without conflict.” T H E P R I M E R U S P A R A D I G M™
Prado comes from a long line of respected and influential lawyers. “Law runs in the family,” he says. Both of his grandfathers held law degrees. His maternal grandfather was Manuel Bustamante de la Fuente, a wellknown writer and politician who served in the Peruvian Senate in the early 1950s and established a foundation bearing his name that promotes legal, historical, and socio-economic research. His father, Javier Prado, is also an attorney; and his uncle, Manuel Bustamante Olivares, co-founded Llona & Bustamante Abogados in 1963, where Prado is now a partner. With Prado’s legal pedigree, it is perhaps unsurprising to learn that he had his sights set on being a lawyer for most of his life.