We provide comprehensive advice to both employers and employees on all day-to-day labour law issues as well as on complex special issues. With our team, we offer you a custom-fit service tailored to your specific needs, whether as an outsourced employment law department or in the form of selective support on individual issues.

We draft sample employment contracts for you as well as individual employment contracts. We support you in the legal optimisation of your employment contracts and, on request, provide contract management, e.g. by reviewing your employment contracts at regular intervals for conformity with case law.

We support you in negotiations with trade unions and works councils (e.g. on collective agreements, reconciliation of interests or social plans, company agreements); we also provide assistance on how to deal with employee representatives in a legally correct manner.

We represent your interests in labour court proceedings, in particular in actions for protection against dismissal, actions for termination of employment or actions for payment of outstanding wages and represent your interests in resolution proceedings before the labour courts or in conciliation boards as well as at the Integration Office.

We check the social security status of the managing director or a collaborating partner in the company for you and accompany you in carrying out a mandatory or precautionary status determination procedure before the German Pension Insurance. Together, we obtain a legally secure and binding decision from the clearing office.

We also work with you to find the right model for the design of compensation systems and employee participation models, e.g. bonuses, target agreements, phantom shares, stock options, and provide support for their implementation in your company.

All advantages of any kind, granted directly or indirectly by the state or through state resources, which favour certain undertakings or sectors and which distort or threaten to distort competition and thus may affect trade within the EU, are regulated in the European Union by state aid law. These include, in particular, regional aid, training aid, restructuring, financing of services of general interest, environmental protection measures and support to overcome financial crises. With our many years of expertise, we examine for you under which conditions government grants do not fall under the prohibition of subsidies and how government grants and other subsidies are applied for.

For many years, we have been assisting private companies in national and international tender offers and procurement procedures from both the bidder’s and the applicant’s point of view. We provide comprehensive support to applicants in the preparation and implementation of the award procedure (structuring of the process, preparation of documents, negotiation) as well as – after the contract has been awarded – in the subsequent contract management. We can accompany the bidders during the bids and requests to participate and review completed procedures for violations of public procurement law.

Due to our expertise in corporate law, we can also provide comprehensive advisory services in ancillary areas of public procurement law.

Knowledge and information transfer through cooperation between universities and industry is essential for the transfer of research into entrepreneurial production processes. The basis for cooperation are cooperation agreements that regulate the contributions of the partners, their handling of trade secrets, contributed IP (background) and the research results (foreground).

We support both universities and industry in national and international research transfer. This includes negotiating cooperation and confidentiality agreements as well as the international transfer of IP and prototypes in compliance with the requirements of export control law. In addition, we draft inter-institutional agreements for you, if necessary.

Money laundering prevention has become more and more important in national as well as international business life in recent years. The topic is more present than ever, which is shown by the increasing number of suspicious activity reports, which are not just reported in detail in the specialised press. Money laundering prevention is not only relevant for large companies and financial service providers. The national German and international money laundering regulations have also gained considerable importance in the international movement of goods, in consultancy contracts and real estate transactions as well as in the context of auctions.

As part of our advisory services on money laundering prevention, we assist you in assessing whether your company is obliged to actively prevent money laundering and how an appropriate safeguard system against money laundering can be developed and established in the company. We also advise on customer-related and transaction-related due diligence obligations and thus also on the identification of business partners.

Corporations act through the executive bodies “managing director” or “executive board”, through the shareholders and through the supervisory bodies “supervisory board” and “advisory board”. The law provides for specific duties of the executive bodies and sanctions for non-compliance with the legal requirements. In recent years, a comprehensive, very detailed body of case law has developed in this regard, with the aim of ensuring the ability of the company and its bodies to act, so that economic damage to the company is averted.

We advise on all organisational and content-related rules for corporate bodies, also taking into account the challenges brought about by the Corona crisis. For example, we also adapt the articles of association of your company so that it is possible for the boards to pass resolutions in a telephone or video conference. We also advise on the question of whether the existing duties of the executive bodies are comprehensively fulfilled in crisis situations and whether precautions have been taken to counteract a negative development.

We provide support in enforcing recourse in the event of significant breaches of duty by the executive bodies that have led to financial damage to the company. In the case of breaches of duty relevant under criminal law, we work in a team with colleagues who have a high level of expertise in criminal law and insurance law in order to realise claims against the D&O liability insurance as well, if possible.

Strategic investments in young, technology- and growth-oriented start-ups always present investors with new challenges. We advise and support corporate venture capitalists, business angels and family offices in negotiating, structuring and implementing investments in start-ups. From the pre-seed or seed phase through the Series A financing round to the exit, we are at your side.

In cooperation with you, we develop an investment strategy, negotiate the term sheets as well as the investment and participation agreements. We can also carry out the due diligence for you, set up employee participation programmes and structure the share or asset deals or an M&A transaction, always keeping an eye on the issues relating to state aid law.

On the other hand, advisory services for founders have to offer answers to different kinds of questions: When is the right time for a spin-off? Which legal form suits my founding team? Which investors suit our company? Do we only need capital or also know-how? What forms of participation are there for investors? Do we need founder vesting? What are the advantages of employee participation and how can it be structured? We clarify these and many other questions with you and your founding team in individual workshops and then take over the drafting of contracts and negotiations. If you wish, we can continue to accompany you after the start-up and then offer you the complete service of an external legal department.

In order to protect products that are newly launched on the market, it is advisable to secure them by registering a patent, a trade mark or another industrial property right. As a technical property right, the patent is of considerable importance for technical inventions. We advise you on questions of patent strategy or utility model law and carry out national, international and European applications. The defence of your patent and utility model rights is also one of our core tasks.

Trade marks serve to identify goods and/or services of companies. Protectable are signs (words, letters, numbers, images, but also colours, holograms, multimedia signs and sounds) that are suitable to distinguish the goods and/or services of a company from those of other companies. We also provide support on the way from the creation or registration of the trade mark to the defence and enforcement of your trade mark rights. In particular, we conduct application procedures at national, European and international level as well as trade mark searches and advise you on your trade mark strategies.

The term product liability refers to both contractual liability (keyword: warranty) and tortious liability, which must always be taken into account when a defective product causes personal injury or damage to property. Since the placing of a product on the market in the EU is already regulated, this limits the distribution of non-conforming products and thus the risk of damage leading to liability.

We have been advising manufacturing companies and manufacturers of food supplements on product liability, liability avoidance and product conformity for more than 20 years.

By drafting individual contracts and training our clients’ employees in the areas of product liability and product safety, we set the course for the best possible reduction of liability risks. In the event of a liability case and/or a product recall, we support our clients in defending themselves against product liability claims both in and out of court – and, conversely, in enforcing the claims.

Our work focuses on the individual drafting of quality management, supplier, dealer and distribution agreements, the enforcement of recourse claims along the production and supply chain as well as the defence against recourse claims along the sales chain. In addition, the area of product compliance (quality assurance, crisis management) and advising board members and managing directors with regard to their product responsibility under criminal and liability law play an important role.

We advise owner-managed companies through the entire cycle of the company’s life, from its foundation through the growth and possibly internationalisation phase to restructuring, reorganisation and also through the difficult process of company succession. The preparation of company succession requires that the areas of inheritance, company and tax law are also taken into consideration. This is where legal structuring comes into play on the basis of the succession concept developed with the client.

In addition, we also develop solutions for the compensation claims of departing shareholders and, especially in family businesses, concepts for the bundling of voting rights. We can also take on supervisory board or advisory board functions or the execution of a will during the transitional phase.

Contract law forms the legal framework for all types of contracts, whereby the rules and regulations are not uniformly summarised in one law. Topics such as freedom of contract, capacity to contract, rescission of contracts and also general terms and conditions play an important role here.

We negotiate your contracts for you as well as undertake the legal review of contracts already negotiated and the enforcement of the obligations agreed in the contract. Furthermore, we review general terms and conditions for you and draft terms and conditions that are individually tailored to your company. This also applies to the area of online commerce. We draft model contracts for standardised transactions.

Likewise, we can guide you in setting up a contract management system and monitoring your contracts.

In the area of distribution law, we draft and negotiate your contracts for you and support you in structuring your distribution systems.

Relevant in this area are the drafting of contracts for sales agents (commercial agents/authorised dealers) as well as the area of sales cartel law, labour law and competition law. In addition, we support you in the event of legal disputes and accompany you in any arbitration proceedings that may become necessary.