Cllr. Lucia D. S. Gbala

Cllr. Lucia Diana Sonii Gbala is a member of the Supreme Court Bar of Liberia with more than seven (7) years of experience as practicing attorney in Liberia. She is a Partner at HPA and currently serves as the head of the Corporate, Finance and Intellectual Property Practice Area.

In her practice of law experience, Cllr. Lucia Gbala’s is engaged with both transactional work and litigation which borders around corporate and commercial law, property law, family law, employment relations, forestry & environmental laws, drafting of legal instruments, and issuance of due diligence reports, legal opinions and advice.

Cllr. Lucia Gbala has also been involved with and has co-chaired alongside its UK partner, ClientEarth, the implementations of two (2) major projects funded by the UK government (DFID) in respect of Forest Governance and Accountability in Liberia called the Forest Governance Markets and Climate Programme (FGMC) and the Multi-Stakeholders Forest Governance and Accountability Programme (MFGAP).

Cllr. Lucia Gbala holds a Master’s Degree in International Business Law (LLM) 2016 from the Tilburg University, The Netherlands and a Bachelor of Law Degree (LLB) (Hons.) 2012 from the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law, University of Liberia.

Prior to her law studies, Cllr. Gbala obtained her first Bachelors of Business Administration (BBA) in 2009 from the Stella Maris Polytechnic. Prior to joining the HPA team, Cllr. Lucia Gbala has served as the former in-house counsel for the Guaranty Trust Bank (Liberia) Ltd.; She has worked at the Global Bank as a personnel assistant and ActionAid Liberia as an intern.

Cllr. Lucia Gbala is an associate member of the Association of Female Lawyers in Liberia (AFELL). Cllr. Lucia Gbala is currently serving as a director at the Foundation for Community Initiatives Liberia (FCI), a not-for-profit organization which focuses on forest governance and natural resource management in Liberia, with specific focus on increasing the participation of women and youth groups in decision-making, benefit sharing and other management practices.

She is also a regular contributor to several reports being published by the World Bank Group and have been certificated for contributing to and/or participating in the Doing Business Reports 2017, 2018 & 2019, World Justice Project Reports 2018, 2019 & 2020, and Women Business and the Law project 2017.