Are you, either as a private person or business enterprise from a German-speaking country, established or looking to establish yourself in France? Our Paris office can provide you with the right specialists for any legal questions with a French connection. Its bilingual lawyers are trained in both the French and German legal systems and can therefore offer comprehensive advisory services.

Our wide-ranging expertise, creativity, determination and sensitivity enables us to clarify complex issues and work out solutions in your interests – even in seemingly deadlocked situations – always taking cultural and legal differences into account.

We provide extra-judicial legal advisory services and represent you and your interests in all French courts, arbitration courts and mediation programmes. We also enforce your debt collection claims, where possible through summary or dunning proceedings. In this way, we ensure that you get your money quickly despite the often long processing periods and strong debtor protection laws that apply in France.

Within the company law field, our work principally involves founding and acquiring companies, supervising and structuring branches and subsidiaries, drawing up managing director contracts, overseeing corporate reorganisation, restructuring and transformation measures, and advising debtors and creditors in insolvency proceedings.

To be able to represent our clients’ interests in France, it is essential that we also provide legal counselling and representation in the area of individual and collective labour law and social law. We have many years of experience in conducting negotiations with social partners (the organisations representing workers and those representing employers) and the labour inspectorate (DIRECCTE “Inspection de Travail”), compiling and implementing social compensation plans and other works agreements, drafting employment contracts, overseeing employee secondments, redundancies and dismissals on personal grounds, and conducting lawsuits before labour courts. We also provide advisory services in the field of occupational safety and data protection, and can assist you, as a foreign employer, with the appointment of a representative in France if you have posted employees to the country.

The defence, protection and acquisition of your intangible rights (intellectual and industrial property law, trademark law, design and utility models, patent law, unfair competition regulations, copyright law, publishing law) is an integral component of our work in the field of intellectual property. The laws that govern IT and telecommunications, biotechnology, and renewable energies comprise a further area of our work, one that we are especially interested in.

Within the field of real property law, we guide clients on all aspects of buying, selling, renting, bequeathing and putting liens on real property. Where necessary, we work with experienced notaries.

In France, disputes in the areas of product liability law, plant construction and other forms of production can prove protracted and problematic for German exporters due to the different legal landscape in the country. We help you to effectively defend your interests by assuming the tasks of drafting contracts and by representing you in any pre-trial discovery proceedings and main proceedings.

Within the field of criminal law, we can be retained as defence counsel in cases involving economic, environmental, tax or traffic offences. We also provide advisory services on compliance and whistleblowing.

In France, the law of succession differs – sometimes very substantially – from that in place in Germany. We can assist you not only with the task of managing estates that have a French connection, but also with the task of planning German-French inheritance situations in advance (examining whether to apply German or French law, looking at structuring options, assessing the international validity of wills, etc.). Should inheritance disputes arise, we ensure that your interests are represented, in court if necessary.

We provide you with legal advice and support where distribution rights and working with commercial agents are concerned. In particular, we help you to draft appropriate contracts and deal with problems that might arise during the course of a contractual relationship. In this context, we also provide advice and court representation where the termination of contracts with commercial agents or authorised dealers is concerned. Here, it is especially key that we calculate the pertinent deadlines and examine, or take measures to ward off, compensation or indemnification claims.

Within the field of traffic and transport law, we assist you in asserting or defending damages claims incurred as the result of traffic accidents, or in handling administrative fine proceedings or proceedings resulting from traffic offences.