Regulated Professions

Soulier Bunch advises regulated liberal professions at every key stage of their professional life cycle: structuring, governance, practice transfer, crisis management, regulatory compliance, and professional disciplinary proceedings.

Our services support both individual practitioners and larger entities structured as group companies, interprofessional firms, or professional networks.

Our team regularly assists legal, accounting, healthcare, architecture, and engineering professionals with practice transfers or strategic combinations. We handle the drafting and negotiation of transfer agreements and facilitate dialogue and interaction with professional governing bodies

We also advise professional firms and groups on their reorganization projects, including corporate conversions, business spin-offs, creation of Liberal Professional Holding Companies (sociétés de participations financières de professions libérales or “SPFPL”), establishment of interprofessional firms, and implementation of shared service structures. We always take a legal, strategic, and operational approach to these projects.

We regularly assist partners of professional firms and groups in establishing effective, sound, and consistent governance structures to organize their professional activity and anticipate changes in business models for professional practice, while ensuring full compliance with legal and professional governing body requirements.

Our firm frequently handles partner disputes, internal crises, and litigation over the governance of professional practice firms. We provide expertise in both the amicable resolution of these conflicts and defense in litigation before civil and commercial courts.

Soulier Bunch also advises professional governing bodies on their institutional and professional initiatives, including regulatory, organizational, and competition law matters

We also represent elected members of professional governing bodies in electoral disputes, as well as members of regulated professions in litigation with their professional governing body or supervisory authority.

Representative Work

• Advised professional firms (medical practices, dental clinics, pharmacies, architecture firms, and law firms) on developing governance structures and structuring their share capital
• Assisted partners of medical practices and clinics in resolving disputes through out-of-court negotiation and mediation, or via civil litigation
• Advised accounting firms on reorganizing their business, covering both structuring and governance
• Advised numerous law firms on establishing SPFPLs, structuring their business models and governance, and implementing management and associate career development policies
• Advised physicians on structuring their group of professional practice firms and optimizing their compensation
• Assisted an architecture firm in structuring the transfer of its practice to new partners
• Advised on the establishment of a dental surgery clinic
• Advised a professional governing body on a resource-sharing project, addressing applicable regulatory and competition law considerations