Obituary:
William Cecil Headrick, the jurist who modernized the law in the Dominican Republic, has died (1937-2026).
Co-founder of the law firm Headrick Rizik Alvarez & Fernandez, he was the author of the Dominican Legal Compendium and a leading figure for several generations of lawyers in the country. He had decades of experience in legal practice and teaching.
William C. Headrick passed away on Thursday, September 10, 2026. His firm, Headrick Rizik Alvarez & Fernandez, confirmed the news with a statement describing him as "a pillar of modern Dominican law."
Headrick was not just the name of a law firm. It was the name of a jurist who dedicated decades to systematizing and teaching law in the Dominican Republic when that task was still, to a large extent, an individual and scattered effort.
An exceptional person who was instrumental in my professional life and whom I grew to love dearly. I will miss him greatly. - Mary Fernandez
Who was William C. Headrick?
Headrick founded the firm that bears his name in 1985, along with Roberto Rizik Cabral, Francisco Alvarez Valdez, and Mary Fernandez Rodriguez. At that time, the firm was one of the first in the country to bring together partners with no family ties to each other, a practice that is standard today but then represented a break with the traditional model of Dominican legal practice.
He retired as an active partner in 2002, although he remained linked to the firm as an external advisor until his death.
His influence, however, extended far beyond his law firm. Through the National School of the Judiciary , where he taught, he trained judges and lawyers who today hold central positions in the Dominican judicial system. He donated the copyright to the Dominican Legal Compendium , his most widely circulated and consulted work in the country's legal profession, to that institution.
A work that remains on the desks
The Compendium was not his only bibliographic contribution. Headrick published several texts that became essential references for those who study or practice law in the Dominican Republic and in comparison with the French system:
Current Trends in French Law
Human Rights in Europe and America
French Law and Common Law: Past and Present
The Family in Dominican and French Law
Quasi-contracts in French and Dominican law
Ten Years of Civil and Commercial Jurisprudence (1997-2007)
The list reveals a constant concern: to build bridges between the French legal tradition - the basis of the Dominican system - and other currents of Western law, at a time when economic globalization was beginning to put pressure on local legal frameworks.
Headrick leaves behind his wife, Inga, his children Allan, Mark and Cecilia, and his granddaughters Sofia and Hannah.
Santo Domingo