Overview
Our relationship with French clients dates back to the early 20th century. In fact, French fashion giant Hermès is one of our longest continuing clients. During World War II, we managed the United States-based assets of many French companies and our involvement with the country and its business community has continued ever since, entering an important new phase when we opened our Paris office in 1991.
This platform paved the way for our representation of multinational clients such as Colgate-Palmolive and the world’s leading financial institutions and industrial companies, which turn to our Paris office for our ability to interpret and navigate the subtleties of the French legal landscape and our experience working across multiple jurisdictions.
Our Paris-based labor and employment practice, ranked in Tier 1 in Legal 500 EMEA and featured among the top five firms in Chambers Europe, is an integral component of our renowned international practice and focuses on collective bargaining, litigation and counseling with a particular emphasis on large corporate reorganizations and discrimination and wage inequality matters. We are also experienced in helping employers comply with the unique French employment protections as they restructure their personnel and navigate related issues.
Our corporate lawyers, who have deep experience in multijurisdictional transactions that include mergers and acquisitions, private equity transactions, corporate restructurings and joint ventures, are regularly ranked in French and international legal directories of reference. In addition, our private investment fund lawyers are an important part of one of the world’s leading fund formation practices and were recognized for their depth of experience in fund formation in Legal 500 and Chambers Europe. All of these groups are supported by our capabilities in tax structuring and planning and complemented by our ability to handle matters such as distribution and licensing, antitrust, urban planning, franchising and new business operations.
Our Competition lawyers, known for their depth of experience and ability to address clients’ most critical needs, represent clients in all areas ranging from competition and antitrust, merger control, EU common market law, as well as distribution and commercial contracts and regulatory consumer law. They were ranked in Chambers Europe and Legal 500 for their experience in competition and distribution.