MEETING THE NEEDS OF BUSINESS FOR STRATEGIC LEGAL ADVICE AND FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION

PIERRE KIRCH’S METHOD FOR MEETING NEEDS

Pierre Kirch’s independent law practice is based on the concept that certain multinational enterprises have a need for a highly experienced lawyer who practiced BigLaw in the corporate and antitrust arena and is able to bring a “Deep Dive” systemic approach to particularly difficult and complex legal situations. Pierre’s view is that there is a specific need of multinational companies for global legal advice when they face complexity and legal uncertainty. This is the approach which Pierre has chosen to practice in the specific context of Vital Laws & Mediations.

Why Vital Laws & Mediations? Why a systemic, Global Vision approach? For Pierre, in today’s business environment, the vital interests of business tend towards the difficult contact points between Business Innovation and Regulatory Reality. The need is thus for a “Deep Dive” into those contact points with a view to a strategic solution. This same environment may lead to new forms of conflict. For instance, AI disputes involving Artificial Intelligence systems in some way. For companies, efficient resolution of such disputes in a fast-changing technological environment can be of vital concern. In certain cases, mediation will be the efficient process of dispute resolution.

STRATEGIC LEGAL ADVICE WHEN BUSINESS INNOVATION CONFRONTS REGULATORY REALITIES

As an independent avocat giving strategic regulatory advice, Pierre Kirch works in a markedly straightforward way: Go to the heart of a company’s operations. Go to the point where Business Innovation must concord with Regulatory Reality. Systemic Analysis is a key in this discipline of the law. It is a Deep Dive into the business and the law: get to know the company’s business as well as the company does itself and then confront with regulatory realities. Method: to develop a Global Vision of the company and its business operations. Analysis through systemic methods.

In responding to the needs of multinational companies for “Deep Dive” legal advice, Pierre Kirch is not only a seasoned international business lawyer, but also an evolving lawyer of his time: highly focused on the complex vital issues deriving from the EU’s Digital Regulatory Ecosystem. This is a new comprehensive legal framework whose pull comes from the EU’s AI Act, promulgated in July 2024, and its institutional cornerstone, the AI Office, a new unit within the European Commission. In fact, the regulatory ecosystem is vast beyond the AI Act, and encompasses, notably, rules on personal data protection (General Data Protection Regulation, “GDPR”), the provision of on-line services and various obligations of on-line operators (Digital Services Act, “DSA”), market behavior on digital markets (Digital Market Act, “DMA”), the circulation and use of data (Data Act), media rights and obligations (Media Freedom Act), etc. In the new Digital Regulatory Ecosystem, these various regulations intersect with each other in a complex way. This Digital Regulatory Ecosystem has also points of interplay with traditional legal disciplines such as competition law and intellectual property law. The ensemble makes for a complex legal ecosystem, under UE rules and European Commission enforcement (as well as that of national authorities in some cases).

Pierre Kirch has been active in the EU’s institutional capital, Brussels, for 35+ years since the 1980s, when he had the privilege of carrying out a six-month training period with the European Commission’s Legal Service. Over 35+ years, present effectively in the Brussels microcosm, he has witnessed the evolution of EU law into what is today a complex institutional and regulatory system. His various client matters in Brussels over those years are part of his professional history, and a source of his expertise today. Pierre has a profound understanding of the workings of the EU institutions (in particular, the European Commission).

Acutely aware of issues that arise in cases where there are contact points between Business Innovation and Regulatory Reality, Pierre Kirch proposes services under a multi-pronged approach:

Advice and assistance on the ways and means of the EU ecosystem in general, or with regard to specific regulatory areas.
Legal advice and assistance specifically on the workings and requirements of the EU’s new Digital Regulatory Ecosystem, in all of its complexity, and on a global, “Deep Dive” basis.
Analysis and legal advice and assistance on specific cases where a company’s Business Innovation may be in conflict with requirements under the EU’s Digital Regulatory Ecosystem.
Generalist corporate advice and assistance, based on 35+ years of international legal experience, with regard to basic and complex corporate structures and operations, M & A transactions, joint venture agreements and structures, and all kinds of contracts (in particular, contracts having an international dimension).
Strategic competition/antitrust advice and assistance, in all disciplines of EU and French competition law (merger control, market behavior, EU State aid, foreign investment, distribution).
Customized strategic dispute resolution advice and assistance, on a worldwide scale, for multinational businesses who seek to adapt their approach to take into account mediation.

MEETING NEEDS FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION THROUGH EFFICIENT MEDIATION METHODS

After many years as a commercial and antitrust litigator, including representations before the French civil & criminal courts and the European courts in Luxembourg, as well as many international arbitration cases, Pierre Kirch has renounced the winner takes all approach of traditional litigation in favor of mediation. In recent years, he has engaged in hundreds of hours of mediation training in various countries. He recognizes that mediation does not correspond necessarily to all commercial disputes and that judicial and arbitral procedures, as well as conciliation procedures, may be called upon to the exclusion of potential mediation in some cases (“multi-door” approach). In this respect, his practice of mediation is not limited to acting as a mediator.

The five-point mediation circle devised by American Professor Thomas Fiutek, to show the stages of a facilitative mediation.

For the business world, Pierre Kirch offers a multi-pronged approach:

Appointment as mediator (mediations organized through mediation institutions such as Equanim International).
Assistance to a party involved in a mediation process.
Addvice and assistance to multinational companies on identification of potential mediators and of international mediation centers throughout the world of the highest level (as a longtime, active member of the UIA’s Forum of Worldwide Mediation Centers, Pierre has developed profound knowledge of worldwide mediation practices and a corresponding network of practitioners, in such way that he can provide considerable benefit to businesses seeking to implement a transnational mediation strategy).
Audits of Court and arbitral litigation dockets of multinational companies, and advisory on means to pursue a strategy of reduction of court and arbitral cases through judicious use of mediation processes.
Advice and assistance to companies interested in bring mediation techniques to new areas of conflict where mediation is very rarely practiced in Europe, such as conflicts resulting from the application of competition/antitrust rules.

As an advisor on the EU’s emerging Digital Regulatory Ecosystem, Pierre Kirch is uniquely qualified to act in AI disputes, that is to say cases where conflict emerges involving Artificial Intelligence systems and where the parties to the conflict would consider, mutually, resolution through mediation. The idea is new. It involves, perhaps, reformulation of the concept of conflict resolution between big, technologically-advanced companies. In the emerging data-driven context of contemporary judicial and arbitral procedures, fueled by the exponential increase in litigation resources deriving, in particular, from use of generative AI litigation “assistants” such as those tools based on the ChatGPT LLM foundation model, Pierre is looking to help companies, whether acting as as avocat or mediator, in cases where they contemplate a simplified, direct humano-centric method to seek resolution to the conflict. That is to say, conflict resolution through mediation.

Pierre conducts mediations, or assists parties in mediations, in the French, English, Spanish and Italian languages (and has a good working knowledge of several other European languages).

He is an Affiliated Mediator with the world’s premier business mediation platform, Equanim International (Paris). He has been trained and certified by the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR, London). He has also been trained and certified by le Centre de mediation et d’arbitrage de Paris (CMAP Paris), in collaboration with ESCP Europe business school (and is a member of the CMAP panel of mediators). In 2021, at the time of the pandemic, he completed an advanced master’s degree in Mediation & Management d’Entreprise at the Institute for Mediation and Negotiation (IFOMENE) of the Catholic University of Paris.

Professor Fiutak’s five-point mediation circle, showing the structure devolution of the mediation process.

THE FIVE-STEP FACILITATIVE MEDIATION CIRCLE

The facilitative, circular mediation process, is particularly relevant in cases having various characteristics, notably the following:

International mediation | International commercial mediation
Complex mediation
Multicultural mediation
AI dispute mediation
Competition/antitrust dispute mediation

MEETING CLIENT & MEDIATION NEEDS