The 350 in-house lawyers who are members of Syntec Numérique would like parliamentarians to support article 21 of the bill for growth and activity, which proposes the creation of the status of in-house lawyer.
France is a country renowned for the quality of its law, an essential element in a country’s attractiveness and competitiveness. Today, however, this asset is under serious threat, and the development of the in-house legal profession is therefore essential.
In the digital sector, in-house lawyers are the guarantors of the legal security of the activities of innovative companies (protection of the secrecy of creations and inventions, intellectual property and data in particular). Their strategic position, strengthened by their independence from operational functions, needs to be reinforced.
This is why in-house lawyers must be treated on an equal footing with other lawyers in the European Union, the vast majority of whom enjoy this status. Otherwise, negotiations conducted by French groups and companies will be less effective and less secure.
Companies will obviously benefit from such a status, since the in-house lawyer will possess “business” knowledge, while the independent lawyer will contribute his procedural and global risk management knowledge. They will benefit all the more in that the status of in-house lawyer will make it possible, via professional secrecy and the confidentiality of correspondence, to protect the discussions of companies, particularly those focused on exporting their technologies.
