The corporate lawyer resurfaces to the great satisfaction of legal directors. In one communicated published on January 15, 2021, the Cercle Montesquieu welcomes the “corporate lawyer” draft law, revealed in the middle of the week by the Dalloz Actualité site. “This text makes it possible both to unify the professions of lawyers and corporate lawyers and to place France at the same level as the major Western democracies in terms of the exercise of law and respect for professional secrecy (legal privilege) by putting an end to an absurd situation that has been blocked in our country for more than thirty years ”, commented the association of legal directors.
The Ministry of Justice in fact plans to experiment for 5 years in certain bars with the possibility for a lawyer to work as an employee for a company, devoting his activity exclusively to the latter, without being able to plead. A gateway would allow in-house lawyers who have been practicing for more than 5 years to access this function, whose opinions would be covered by confidentiality.
As for lawyers, the institutions representing the profession remain silent for the moment. But the subject should be discussed at the next general assembly of the National Council of Bars on January 22. In an interview with the Palace Gazette early January (Gas. Pal. 5 Jan. 2021, n ° GPL394j8, p. 11), the new president of the CNB, Jérôme Gavaudan, had specified that it would be up to the general assembly to determine the position of the profession if necessary, while recalling that, given the crisis, the subject was not priority for lawyers. However, the FNUJA has already made its opinion known on the subject on Twitter, calling the corporate lawyer “a mutant who has been awarded a secret and the title oflawyer without the guarantees and obligations of our ethics ”. “This project is an insult and a legal UFO! “, Estimated the union.
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