When starting my company in Costa Rica, I found it strange that every second person I met had a cousin or brother who was a lawyer. It seems this is not rare in Costa Rica, and everyone is more than happy to introduce you to him or her. I made the terrible mistake of taking the first person who was introduced to me, all because he had a nice house and looked professional. In the end I should have shopped around. I was charged $500 USD for him to register our business. At the time I thought this was a steal, but I later found out it was highway robbery.
Our lawyer friend charged us the full amount and did not even take the time to fill out our legal books. We were told to copy a text by hand in the books ourselves and to make sure that we did not make any grammatical errors. On top of everything, he never printed off our shares, which I was not even aware were needed. And all of this I got from a friend!!!
In the end, this little mistake ended up costing us thousands of dollars in order to set all of our books and contracts straight a few years later. Even worst, we had to pay fines from the Costa Rican government for not having the correct forms filled out. This gave us a black eye and we are still trying to clean up our image in terms of the government.
In the end you should pay no more than $300 USD to have a corporation started in Costa Rica. You do not need any Costa Rican partners, as you and your foreign investors are all that is needed. Included in the fee should be your shares, which you should guard with your life as all it takes is a signature on the back of them for someone to claim that the shares were legally transferred to them.
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