The second year of the Covid-19 crisis has seen French firms busier than ever. Following an initial slowdown between March and May at the beginning of the pandemic, the Paris market has more than picked itself up since early summer 2020. As corporates and investors adapted to life under Covid rules and French courts opened up again, firms across all areas of the legal market report extremely high levels of activity.
As interest rates remain low, firms are struggling to keep pace with the big appetite for mergers and acquisitions. LBO specialists in particular shouldered more transactions in 2021 than in the year before the pandemic hit. The Paris fund formation teams also report a buzzing market, partly caused by a necessity to fund restructurings, but mainly driven by the economy’s staggering comeback. In the venture and growth capital scene, the extremely busy market, and in particular the heavy investments made by US and UK investors, has caused a rise in the number of new firms specialising in venture and growth capital transactions.
This surge in transactional activity is expected to give further rise to the already high number of antitrust investigations, many of which were launched in 2021 to work through the backlog that was caused by the outbreak of the pandemic. It has also been a particularly busy year for state aid-related disputes given the number of companies that received help from the French state to weather the difficulties caused by France’s response to the outbreak of the pandemic. In this area, France’s specialised boutiques have successfully attracted high-profile matters and defended their spot in the market against their Anglo-Saxon competitors. The country’s insurance experts, many of whom are active at independent French firms, have reported an uptick in activity thanks to a simultaneous rise in business interruption claims and in advisory work on policy reviews.
Given the high number of specialised boutiques built around the needs of M&A clients, the importance of remaining as a premium quality one-stop shop is a key challenge.
The legal market in 2022 is expected to remain highly competitive. Frédéric Nouel, senior partner at Gide since January 2021, underlines the importance of the firm’s choice to remain full service instead of evolving into a smaller unit that focuses on M&A and finance. The country’s other big independent firms, Bredin Prat, Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier and De Pardieu Brocas Maffei, also stand out through the breadth of their offering, albeit to different extents.
While there are differences between them in the market segments that they target, especially in their transactional and finance work, the differentiation between them and boutiques remains crucial in their efforts to retain clients and generate new work.
Given the high number of specialised boutiques built around the needs of M&A clients – including distressed M&A offerings as a more recent development – the importance of remaining as a premium quality one-stop shop is a key challenge. For cross-border matters, the French independents rely on a mix of their own offices abroad and networks of partnering firms, in particular in jurisdictions where firms are starting to build a practice. The pandemic has helped with establishing and strengthening ties with firms in other jurisdictions as it has accelerated firms’ efforts to become fully digital. Clients and lawyers alike have become much more discerning about which tasks require an in-person meeting and which can be better dealt with online, resulting in more flexible working conditions for the lawyers and cost and time savings for the clients.
The biggest issue facing firms remains the recruitment and retention of qualified associates. French independent firms, big and small, and the Paris-based Anglo-Saxon players struggle to attract and keep new talent, already at junior level, but even more so when it comes to senior associates or counsel. The pandemic has hit them with a double challenge: the uncertainty linked to the outbreak of the pandemic has caused many lawyers to hesitate before considering a change of employer while at the same time making those who are willing to move that much more selective in their choice of firm. At Gide, senior partner Nouel points to the firm’s efforts in showing graduates and young lawyers that the firm offers them the possibility to build a successful career while staying with the firm.
Meanwhile the Anglo-Saxon firms continue to grow their presence in Paris, with the arrival of Addleshaw Goddard in 2021 and the 2019 opening of Kirkland & Ellis proving the economic importance of France on the international scene. The French independents therefore face strong competition, but maintain an optimistic outlook as their calendars are already filled well into 2022. The growing intervention of the French state, visible for example in the state-backed loans that were made available to struggling companies, is likely to work in favour of those firms that have maintained close ties to the legislator, with French independents like Gide or Bredin among the best-known for their expertise in the public law sphere. LB
| Rank (by L500 ranking) | Firm | Region | Total lawyers | Total partners | Promotions | Offices | Partner hires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | Gide Loyrette Nouel | France | 485 | 118 | 7 | 11 | |
| 37 | Bredin Prat | France | 190 | 46 | 2 | 1 | |
| 59 | Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier | France | 85 | 29 | 3 | 1 | |
| 79 | De Pardieu Brocas Maffei | France | 150 | 34 | 3 | 1 |