The Legal View

By Bill Sarno

Daniel Diaz Leyva, a successful and respected Miami attorney, sees a correlation between an emerging minority community and representation at the board level.

AS DANIEL DIAZ LEYVA paves the way for his Miami-headquartered law firm, Diaz Leyva Group, a firm well established in the corporate and real estate practice areas, new challenges await. With hopes of scaling in the near future, his strategic plan includes more work in his current transactional space, expanding to support his owner operator entrepreneurial clients with estate planning and immigration, and a new path toward litigation. He believes in a natural transition and growth pattern to business arising from serving as a trusted advisor to clients who organically request support in other areas of the law. “My relationship with my clients evolves over time as trust and confidence is earned over the course of each mandate. Eventually, clients request our counsel in other areas outside the scope of our mandates because of our ability to trouble shoot and give honest, effective advice," says Diaz Leyva, who left one of the nation's largest law firms to open his own practice and has built a client portfolio that includes the nation's largest homebuilders, banks and wealthy Latin American immigrants.

In addition, the new trajectory he envisions for Diaz Leyva Group responds to the fact that Hispanics are gaining in all sectors of life in the U.S., and he wants his practice to be a part of it.

“With more than 62 million Hispanics across the country, you need to be a reflection of the community you represent,” says Diaz Leyva. “More and more, companies are taking note of the growing population they are selling products and services to, and engaging and hiring more Hispanics to handle their legal work at firms like mine.” Having said that, it’s no secret that population growth among minorities is driving overall U.S. population growth. It’s just that these realities need to be felt across the spectrum, according to Diaz Leyva, including in corporate board membership. “As access to the board room grows to include an increasing number of Hispanic leaders, a trickle effect begins with a community a company serves reflected at all levels of that company. And it is this that I think will happen in the not-too-distant future.”

A very personal project for Diaz Leyva is the creation of a foundation which will manifest his commitment to sustained mentoring and give him the chance to pay forward the opportuni- ties he has received. While his agenda is ambitious, its underpinnings rest solidly on the inspiration of Cubans, like his family, who have lived in exile for more than 60 years. "Our generation has benefited significantly from our parents and grandparents’ generations," says Diaz Leyva. “They bore the brunt of the challenges- the need to integrate themselves into the community and learn the language.” Diaz Leyva’s grandfather, who was an attorney and editor of some of the largest newspa- pers in Cuba, worked as a janitor when he arrived in the U.S. "I draw a lot from those hardships that my parents and grandparents experienced. I live my life with gratefulness and appreciation of their sacrifices and the opportunities that were given to us because of the adversity they endured,” reflects Diaz Leyva. "This has helped shape my life, my perspective on the world, how I treat people and on how I build my business. It is a big part of who I am.”

One of those opportunities was access to education. Diaz Leyva attended the University of Miami, majored in finance, and then obtained his law degree from St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami Gardens, FL. "I realized that everything you do in business touches on the law so I felt that going to law school would be very helpful in the business world." He credits his family for his career choice as he felt a deep responsibility to make the most of the higher education he had been afforded.

At the beginning of his career, he worked with various mid-size and large law firms, including Foley & Lardner LLP, where he had the opportunity to work with distinguished and long-established clients, including publicly traded companies and innovative tech companies. This experience inspired him to go out on his own, even though it meant a bit of belt tightening. "I didn't start the practice to take over the world," he said. “I just wanted to be in control of my own destiny and support people that I thought big firms were not capable of supporting in a cost-efficient way." Initially it was friends and family that gave Diaz Leyva the opportunity to represent them. But today, his firm is anchored by a large publicly traded homebuilder, LGI Homes, the 10th largest publicly traded homebuilder in the country, based in The Woodlands, Texas.

Diaz Leyva represents LGI Homes across the state of Florida, managing all of its land acquisitions, homeowners’ association (HOA) work, and generally trouble shooting issues as the need arises. Other major clients include Farm Stores Franchising, a national drive-through convenience store chain; and real estate, investment and development companies such as Barlington Group, Orion Real Estate Group, The Estate Companies, and LinkVest Capital. He also represents several banks including City National Bank of Florida, Ocean Bank and Valley National Bank, handling their loan transactions. Other clients include family offices and investors from Latin America who are able to capitalize on Diaz Leyva being bilingual. "I do a lot of acquisition and sale work, leasing, and financings in the real estate space and direct investments with sponsors in the real estate private equity space for these kinds of clients," he said.

Diaz Leyva and his wife Cristina have two children, Daniel Jr., 9, and Adriana, 7. They have been very involved in their community for more than a decade and along the way, he has been honored by several organizations for his community service. He has garnered the Ruth Shack Leadership Award from the Miami Foun- dation and the Head of School Alumni Award from Palmer Trinity School, his high school alma mater. He has also served on the board of trustees of the nation’s largest institution of higher learning, Miami Dade College; and helped establish and served as the executive director of the U.S. chap- ter of the Consejo Empresarial de Améri- ca Latina, an organization that promotes economic development across the western hemisphere supported by some of the re- gions’ most successful entrepreneurs.

As his career evolves, he continues to draw upon his grandparents and parents. "Any time I find myself in a challenging situation, I tighten my belt and say: what would they have done? And that has pushed me through, it has helped me break through barriers."