The professional history of Fernando Tristão Fernandes was enriched by his political militancy during Brazil’s harsh military regime in 1964. He has extensive experience in several legal areas and more than half a century practicing law.

He began practicing law by defending students arrested by the Department of Political and Social Order (Departamento de Ordem Política e Social – Dops) in Paraná state. He was persecuted politically and arrested and even while in confinement held 30 juries, denounced torture and fought for labor and social rights.

His knowledge of Brazilian reality and society also comes from his life trajectory as a native of Espírito Santo state, who has lived in several states. He married in Minas Gerais but his first child was born in Bahia: Fernando Fernandy Fernandes who, as an attorney, was justice secretary of the State of Rio de Janeiro, secretary general of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and is currently a judge in the Rio de Janeiro Court of Appeals.

He earned his degree in Law and Economics in Paraná state. It was there that in the first half of the 1960s, his involvement in the union movement grew considerably. Hi son Fernando Olinto Fernandes was born in Curitiba and became a doctor in Médecins Sans Frontières, where he spent two years with the Yanomami tribe and took part in humanitarian missions in wars in Sri Lanka and Rwanda.

Confined in Mato Grosso do Sul during the toughest period of the military regime, Tristão devoted himself entirely to law and it was there that his son Fernando Augusto Fernandes was born and it is Fernando Augusto who now works with him in the firm. After the amnesty, he settled in Rio de Janeiro, where he set up a new practice, and today he also has a head office in the city of São Paulo.

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