Crefovi files competition law complaints against the Paris bar

Annabelle Gauberti and Crefovi file competition law complaints against the Paris bar (‟ordre des avocats à la cour de Paris”) before the European Commission and the French Competition authority

Annabelle Gauberti, a member of the Paris Bar and a Solicitor of England & Wales, together with Crefovi SELAS, has filed formal competition law complaints with the European Commission, Directorate-General for Competition, and the French Competition Authority (‟Autorité de la concurrence”) against the ‟ordre des avocats à la cour de Paris” (Paris bar).

The complaints set out evidence and legal arguments that the Paris Bar and associated actors have engaged in anticompetitive conduct by using disciplinary, regulatory, administrative and accounting powers as instruments of market control and exclusion, including through repeated proceedings, discriminatory treatment, reputational harm, interference with essential professional infrastructure, and the raising of rivals’ operating costs.

More specifically, the complaints allege:

anticompetitive decisions and practices of an association of undertakings;

exclusionary abuse of dominant position;

market foreclosure through the use of criteria that are insufficiently objective, transparent, precise, proportionate and non-discriminatory;

and the cumulative use of disciplinary, administrative, accounting and reputational measures to increase the operating costs of targeted practitioners, interfere with essential tools of practice, damage professional reputation, and marginalise or exclude independent lawyers from the legal services market.

The complaints further contend that the Paris bar, which is composed of lawyers who themselves operate on the legal services market, acts at the very least as an association of undertakings for competition-law purposes, while also exercising a structural power over access to, continued presence on, reputation within, and conditions of practice within that market.

Ms Gauberti and Crefovi have asked the European and French competition authorities to examine whether the concentration of disciplinary, regulatory, administrative and accounting powers within such a professional body, composed of market participants, has enabled practices and conduct liable to distort competition, restrict innovation, deter independent and atypical practitioners, increase the operating costs of targeted practitioners, damage their professional reputation, interfere with essential tools of practice, and ultimately marginalise or exclude them from the legal services market in Europe and, in particular, France.

The complaints also raise concerns about the impact of such practices on innovative and independent models of legal practice, including legal services provided within the European Union, in particular France, and the United Kingdom. Ms Gauberti practises through Crefovi, an independent Paris-based law firm with a cross-border structure, composed of a secondary office located in London, United Kingdom, providing legal services from Paris and London, with an international dimension. The complaints contend that restrictive or exclusionary conduct of this kind is capable of affecting not only domestic competition within the Paris legal market, but also the provision of cross-border legal services and the exercise of international legal practice from Paris, within the European Union.

In support of the competition law complaint addressed to the French ‟Autorité de la concurrence”, Ms Gauberti and Crefovi expressly rely on the French Competition Authority’s own enforcement record concerning Paris-based legal professionals (i.e. ‟huissiers de justice”), including Decision No. 22-D-01 of 13 January 2022, in which the Authority sanctioned the Bureau de signification de Paris and several of its ‟huissiers de justice” members, including Pascal Vignat, for anti-competitive practices involving non-objective, non-transparent and discriminatory conditions of admission, suspension and exclusion.

Annabelle Gauberti stated:

“These complaints are not about a mere disciplinary disagreement. They raise a broader competition-law issue: whether a professional body composed of market participants can use disciplinary and regulatory powers in a way that restricts competition, distorts market conditions and excludes independent lawyers from practice.

Crefovi and I have asked both the European Commission and the French Competition Authority to examine these issues carefully.”

Annabelle Gauberti and Crefovi will continue to defend their rights, professional reputation and the free exercise of the legal profession of “avocat à la cour” and lawyer, through all appropriate legal and regulatory channels.