Westminster Law School held an event in partnership with the Franco-British Lawyers Society titled Contract Law as an Instrument of Legal Predictability and Economic Attractiveness: A Franco-British Perspective, on 24 November 2022 at Westminster’s Regent Street Campus.
The Franco-British Lawyers Society is a charity whose purpose includes advancing public education in French and UK laws and facilitating exchanges between British and French lawyers.
Dr Catherine Pédamon, Senior Lecturer at Westminster School of Law and President of the England and Wales section of the Franco-British Lawyers Society, welcomed a panel of distinguished speakers and led a discussion on how domestic courts contribute to legal predictability and the extent to which the choice of law and choice of jurisdiction matter for practitioners in their commercial endeavours.
Professor Luke Mason, Head of Westminster Law School, introduced the event, together with Estelle Cros, the French Embassy’s Magistrat de Liaison to the United Kingdom.
The first panel surveyed how courts contribute to Predictability in Contractual Interpretation through the lens of senior judges in England, France and Scotland, including the Right Hon Lord Leggatt, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom; Francois Ancel, Justice of the Cour de Cassation; and Lord Ericht, Judge of the Scottish Supreme Courts and a Commercial Judge in the Court of Session. Despite persistent differences, convergent approaches to contractual interpretation across jurisdictions are noticeable, particularly following the 2016 French reform of the law of obligations.
The second panel heard from Laure Lavorel, President of the Cercle Montesquieu and General Counsel, and Jean-Francois Le Gal, Barrister and Partner at Pinsent Masons, who shared insights from their practice as to what makes a law and a forum attractive for business. From these discussions, it appears that it is the degree of familiarity with the chosen legal regime or the sophistication of the relevant law and forum, which actually matters.
Talking about the event, Professor Mason said: “Well done [to colleagues] on organising such a wonderful event. A sign of a great event is always the quality of intellectual and professional exchanges after the talks, in which case this was a great success.”
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