CMS Francis Lefebvre

Challenges

We support companies and their leaders at every stage of their project: creation, development, transmission. Our know-how, knowledge of our clients' businesses and our experience allow us to offer individualized solutions at the crossroads of business law and taxation.

Our goals are: 

• To help managers in their strategic choices
• Assess the real economic stakes of the operations we advise them on
• To provide our clients with effective and constructive assistance in the various phases of the development of their operations and their negotiations
• To secure technically, but in a pragmatic way, the recommended operations.  

Our areas of intervention

Business creation :

• Choice of appropriate structures
• Constitution of companies
• Organization of joint ventures and relations between associates (associate agreements)

Business development :

• Set-up of operations, legal engineering, set-up of financing, equity financing, investor relations
• Disposals and acquisitions: negotiations, audits, protocols
• Legal structuring: mergers, demergers, partial asset contributions
• Management of crisis situations, partner conflicts
• Management of business difficulties: insolvency proceedings
• Stock market law

Transfer of the business :

• Asset organization
• Investment strategy for business real estate 

Our approach

We offer our clients a personalized follow-up based on knowledge of the company's own situation. We provide solutions adapted and studied in relation to their needs. The permanence and stability of our teams allow us to keep a “memory” of the company and to know its “history”.

In addition, our technology watch on changes in regulations enables us to be able to offer our customers the opportunity to take advantage of new opportunities. Finally, our clients benefit from the diversity of skills developed within our firm in all areas of business law.

Challenges

We are currently witnessing the increasing judicialization of different areas of law. Recent developments in the business world are characterized by the increasingly frequent questioning of the civil or criminal liability of company directors and shareholders.

The proliferation of a company's contractual parties has also led to increasingly frequent recourse to the courts or to arbitration to resolve situations of open conflict or difficulties encountered during the performance of contractual relationships. Faced with a double imperative of transparency, particularly in terms of financial practices and good governance, and faced with the need to quickly protect its vital interests, the company thus sees an increase in pre-litigation and litigation cases.

It must be effectively defended, failing which the economic consequences, the penalties, both financial and criminal, can be heavy.  

Challenges

In a context where intellectual heritage is one of the mainsprings of economic development, both technologically and creatively, companies must develop, preserve and defend their intellectual heritage. Four priority challenges are imposed on all market players:

• Ensure ownership of technological innovations and creations made for the company by its employees or service providers
• Guarantee their protection
• Build secure contractual operating plans
• Defend its intangible assets in the event of counterfeiting and/or unfair and parasitic competition.  

Our areas of intervention

We advise our clients in the following main areas:

• Patent law and know-how, plant variety certificates
• Trademark law, domain names
• Design law
• Copyright and neighboring rights
• Database law, protection of personal data
• Unfair and parasitic competition.

We offer a service of:

• Analysis of the legal situation, advice and consultations relating to any issue relating to intellectual property rights
• Drafting and negotiation of R&D, license, assignment, coexistence contracts
• Audits of the company's intellectual assets
• National and Community filing of trademarks and designs, research and analysis of prior rights
• Opposition proceedings both in demand and in defense
• Customs supervision
• Assistance and representation in intellectual property litigation before the civil, commercial and criminal courts (infringement seizures, infringement actions, provisional prohibition measures, etc.)
• Assistance and representation in matters of unfair and parasitic competition litigation and more generally in tort or contractual liability related to these areas.  

Our approach

• The transversality of our expertise based on the complementarity of the skills of its members: in advice, contracts and litigation in both intellectual property law and competition law.
• The complementarity of our team with the other legal and tax skills of the firm: the files have an often ignored dimension, which goes beyond the sole framework of intellectual property. Also, lawyers specializing in other matters are often called upon (taxation, competition, regulations, etc.).
• The handling of cases in their international dimension by dedicated lawyers in collaboration with other members of CMS.
• A pragmatic approach combined with knowledge of the economic sectors of our clients.

Our clients

All French or foreign companies whose activity is conditioned by the preservation and development of their intangible heritage in sectors as varied as life sciences, chemistry, information technology, mechanics, agri-food , textiles and the luxury industry in particular.

Challenges

Company management today faces four major challenges in terms of social policy:

• Guarantee the greatest possible legal certainty
• Respond to market demand with more flexibility in terms of personnel
• Build a real social project through loyalty and motivation
• Face the financial challenges raised by the implementation of a social policy within the company. 
• Responding to them is the mission we have set ourselves. 

Our areas of intervention

We advise our clients in the field of collective and individual labor relations and deal with the social implications of strategic business decisions, in advice or litigation, on the following points:

• Status of leaders / departure negotiation
• Arrangement of working time, 35 hours
• Salary policy and employee savings
• Collective bargaining and staff representation
• Job protection plans and layoffs
• Collective and individual litigation (labour relations, URSSA F inspections, etc.)
• European harmonization of human resources policies 
• Retirement and provident plans
• International mobility management
• National and international restructurings
• Social acquisition audit. 

Our approach

It is based on:

• The openness of our teams to the other skills of the firm , both legal and tax. Indeed, the complexity of the problems posed requires the synergy of legal expertise, for example with tax law to deal with the status of managers and international mobility or with company law when it comes to restructuring. 
• Methodological rigour : assessment of needs, strategy, advice favoring the anticipation of disputes, management of disputes, support in the different phases of our clients' operations. 
• The ability to handle international cases by dedicated, multilingual lawyers who master the international practice of labor law.

Our clients

• Medium-sized companies, French and international groups and their subsidiaries in all sectors of activity. Our presence is particularly recognized in the pharmaceutical, IT, press, agri-food and automotive equipment sectors, where our clients entrust us with the management of complex files.

Challenges

The growing complexity of regulations and case law at each stage of real estate investment, construction, occupation and operation of a site, requires understanding the issues and the issues arising therefrom. The proliferation of disputes observed calls for increasingly rigorous forward-looking preparation on the part of each of the operators involved, whether it concerns the procedure envisaged, the content of the various written supports, in particular contractual ones, the nature and terms of action to be taken.  

Our areas of intervention

• Legal transactions in the real estate field : Sale / acquisition of companies and businesses in the real estate field. Creation / acquisition and follow-up of civil real estate company. Assistance with the acquisition of business and/or investment real estate.
• Leases and finance leases : Commercial and professional leases, short-term leases, right to lease, construction lease, real estate finance lease. Pre-litigation (negotiation of eviction compensation). Litigation of commercial leases.
• Other contracts in the field of real estate : Assistance contracts for private project management, delegated private project management. Construction contracts (property development, works contracts). Real estate subcontracting contracts. Architecture contracts, project management.
• Construction insurance : Insurance in the field of construction: TRC, DO, PUC, ten-year liability insurance, professional liability insurance.
• Real estate taxation : Taxation of real estate transactions. Transfer rights (real estate VAT, registration fees). Taxation of the various leases, Property income of individuals. Tax exemption.
• Real estate litigation : Compromise of sale, transfer of ownership. Leases and finance leases (break, termination indemnity, etc.). Seizure of real estate. Preventive referrals. Liability of property sellers and builders. Expertise in property damage. Litigation of works contracts and subcontracting.
• Town planning – Environment : Regulatory town planning. Planning permissions. Operational town planning. Pre-emption rights. Financial contributions for town planning. Taxation of public real estate transactions. Management of litigation and pre-litigation appeals, referrals. Protection of nature (coastal law, mountain law, nature reserves, etc.). Polluted sites and soils (liability guarantee, restoration, etc.). Installations Classified for the Protection of the Environment (ICPE). Water law.
• Social real estate law : Practice of collective agreements and national agreements in real estate, development, building and public works. Health and safety on construction sites. Hidden work. Subcontracting. Recruitment of foreign employees. Construction paid holiday fund. Criminal labor law (concealed work, illegal labor lending, bargaining, accidents at work, etc.).

Our approach

For all of these areas and operations, we provide:

• The audit of the legal, tax and administrative situation, advice, consultation and assistance in the negotiation and conclusion of protocols, preliminary contracts and contracts.
• Disputes related to these matters.

Our clients

Banking establishments, investors & property companies, users (large companies and SMEs), developers, real estate intermediaries and main operators in the real estate sector.

Our expertise in these different sectors is based on lawyers who have proven skills in the real estate sector, who are always able to rely on the teams of our firm specialized in real estate law, real estate taxation and local taxation, in order to guarantee a truly high-level multidisciplinary approach.

We provide our clients with a global approach to the management of their operations: from their forecast to their implementation and execution, by taking charge of relations with other stakeholders (notaries, surveyors, experts, administrative authorities, tax administration …).