Lawyer Monthly Magazine - March 2020 Edition

28 WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM | MAR 2020 My Legal Life By François-Régis Fabre-Falret, LPA-CGR avocats I started at Clifford Chance Paris in November 1999. I then joined Jones Day Paris in September 2004. I have been a partner in the Real Estate department of LPA-CGR avocats in Paris since July 2015. At that time, it was not yet LPA-CGR avocats but Lefevre Pelletier & Associés and I was very proud to be a part of the great adventure of the 2016 merger with CGR Legal (my previous law firm). This merger provided many great challenges for everyone in the firm. I became a member of LPA-CGR avocats Executive Committee on January 1st 2019, where my focus is essentially on the firm’s digital transformation, which I believe will be one of the greatest challenges facing French law firms over the next 10 years. I now have more than 20 years experience in the Real Estate sector, with particular emphasis on investment and construction. How has the legal sphere changed from when you first qualified? Since 1995, the number of lawyers in France has increased from 30,000 to 69,000. So the biggest change has clearly been competition, with a direct consequence on the level of the fees and the absolute necessity to provide the best and most innovative legal services. This is why LPA-CGR avocats has decided to get involved in legal techs. Our firm was the first French law firm to appoint, in 2018 a non-lawyer as Chief Digital Officer to lead the firm into strong and sustainable digital transformation. We have already implemented several digital solutions such as, for instance, Closd which provides our clients with the opportunity to have access to a platform helping all parties to monitor transactions with a solution of a valid and certified digital signature. Thanks to our partnership with Closd, this digital solution is becoming more and more popular on the French real estate market. What has been your biggest achievement to date? I would say my two main achievements to date are: - Building over the last ten years a strong and loyal relationship with an extensive portfolio of clients enabling our involvement in many extremely large and complex real estate transactions. Our challenge will be to continue providing the highest level of legal services to these clients over the next ten years; - Having initiated the merger between Lefevre Pelletier & Associés and CGR Legal which lead to the creation of LPA-CGR avocats. LPA-CGR avocats is now one of the 10 leading independent French law firms in France. François-Régis Fabre-Falret’s Journey Into Law