Credit: bizvector/Adobe Stock Is Germany on the Brink of Allowing Third-Party Ownership of Law Firms?
By law, mere financial investors are not allowed to acquire stakes in law firms in Germany. In other countries this has long been standard practice. The German concern: legal independence could suffer. Others say: This violates fundamental European freedoms. Now the ECJ is to decide.
August 29, 2024 at 07:08 AM
5 minute read
The origins of Daniel Halmer's story are quickly told. In 2020 in Bavaria, Germany's largest federal state, Halmer founded his law firm and a year later assigned 51 of the 100 shares in the small law firm to an Austrian limited liability company.
The buyer was not a lawyer and didn't want to buy into Halmer's law firm as a partner but as an investor, a financier in other words. At first glance, it appeared to be a fairly banal business deal yet it is one that could fundamentally alter the German legal market.
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