President of the "Association of Friends of the Fondation"

Vice-president of AFJE (The French Association of Corporate Lawyers)

The French Association of Corporate Lawyers (AFJE), a member of the Association of Friends of the Foundation, has just joined the board of directors of the Fondation.  Can you give us an introduction to the AFJE?   

The AFJE is very honored and pleased  to join the board of directors of the Fondation pour le droit continental.  The Association Française des Juristes d’Entreprise  - French Association of Corporate Lawyers, currently chaired by Jean-Charles Savouré, Associate General Counsel for IBM Europe, comprises approximately 4000 in-house attorneys, including 600 general counsels or heads of law departments at more than 1300 companies.  The AFJE  was founded more than 40 years ago by Raymond Sié and evolved alongside the profession of in-house counsel, currently the second most popular legal career involving some 16,000 attorneys.  The AFJE was from the outset, and remains, the most important organization of corporate  lawyers, geared at defending and promoting the corporate  attorney position and to provide a forum for meetings, discussions, information, and training.  Accordingly, the AFJE has built up an extensive network with the multitude of public and private organizations affecting its professional environment.  We maintain regular contacts with public authorities, as well as the other legal professions  and their organizations (“avocats”, notaries, bailiffs, management), magistrates, law professors and researchers at universities and schools, educational organizations, law journal editors, foreign attorneys, in particular European attorneys, through our participation in the ECLA (European Company Lawyers Association, with offices in Brussels).  The AFJE also plays a leading role  in issues concerning in-house counsel such as the privilege and confidentiality accorded to their legal opinions  as is recognized in continental and common law jurisdictions. 

Throughout France, we are represented by very active regional delegations. The AFJE also sponsors some fifteen topic-specific committees that enable in-house counsel  to meet and discuss  both technical issues of a legal nature (for example, the committee on the law of companies and financial advisors), or are more closely related to the characteristics of professional practice (such as the SME committee and the international lawyers committee). or lastly, technical but non-legal issues (as in the case of the Methods and Organization Committee).  It should be noted that AFJE attorneys who practice law abroad likewise constitute a committee. 

What are the shared interests of the Fondation and the AFJE ? 

The AFJE brings together legal practitioners who work daily on the legal matters affecting their companies’ operations, whether in France or abroad or multi-nationally.  Through the breadth and diversity of the kinds of businesses in which its members practice and through the variety of the legal problems encountered, the AFJE brings to the table an accurate picture of the practice of commercial law.  This perspective from within a company, which is not only current but forward-directed and involving a broad spectrum of the business world, can contribute expertise and further supplement the already rich body of knowledge within the Fondation, including findings,  recommendations and suggestions from  many companies on the use of Anglo-Saxon or continental law in the actual business practice..  The AFJE will be able to draw on this common pool of ideas and arguments in favor of the defense of continental law.

The AFJE can thus be both a conveyor of the experience of its lawyers to the Fondation and it can also relay the actions, ideas, work and proposals of the Fondation to its members and to its other interlocutors. 

The majority of the members of the AFJE are trained mainly in French and thus continental law.  The real shared interest is encouraging them to promote this law in their international practice in a fashion that is not detrimental to their companies and could possibly even improve their legal operations.