The Brussels office currently has approximately 100 lawyers, including 16 partners, two counsel, two senior counsel and one senior consultant representing a wide range of countries and including members of the bar of most EU Member States. The Brussels office was established in 1960 as a direct consequence of the close relationship between Jean Monnet and former Under-Secretary of State, George Ball, one of the firm’s founding partners and legal advisor to Jean Monnet on the implementation of the Marshall Plan and the drafting of the Treaties of the European Communities. The primary practice areas of the Brussels office include antitrust, corporate, litigation, international trade and regulatory work.
The Brussels office has an internationally acclaimed antitrust law practice, treating issues such as merger control, cooperation and distribution agreements, abuse of dominant market positions and state aid. We regularly represent clients in proceedings before the European Commission and EU Member State competition authorities.
The corporate practice spans all areas of national and international corporate law, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and structured finance, sovereign debt restructuring and tax law. We regularly render general and specialty advice in corporate and commercial matters, covering areas such as general contractual law, corporate obligations and reporting, director duties and other corporate governance issues. Our corporate lawyers serve a wide variety of domestic and foreign corporations, financial institutions and sovereign governments.
The office has a rich litigation and arbitration practice, with lawyers qualified to try cases before the European and national courts. Our lawyers regularly represent clients in litigation and arbitration proceedings in all aspects of the firm’s antitrust, corporate, commercial and regulatory practices.
Brussels lawyers have significant expertise in providing regulatory advice to clients, under both EU and national law. The office’s regulatory expertise spans a wide range of sectors, including international trade, telecommunications and media, information technology and e-commerce, intellectual property, environmental and labor law. We have represented clients before the European Commission and the European courts in regulatory matters, in addition to representation before the Belgian postal, telecommunications, media, environment and energy regulatory agencies.
The office is not departmentalized and many of our lawyers practice in more than one of the practice areas identified above. For more information about the firm’s practice areas, click here.
Regulatory Notice