A member of the Paris Bar and Doctor of Law, Hervé Guyader advises and represents shipowners, charterers, shippers, freight forwarders, insurers, legal departments and executives in their transactions and disputes, in France and internationally. The firm practises mainly in international trade law and maritime law, as well as in business law and real estate law.
In figures
An international litigation and advisory practice: more than 1,000 clients advised.
Where our clients come from
A career built on both academia and the courts
The practice rests on two foundations pursued side by side. From 1998, at the start of his doctorate, Hervé Guyader worked with several avocats aux Conseils, the lawyers admitted to plead before the Conseil d’État and the Cour de cassation, where the technique of the appeal on points of law and the discipline of legal argument are honed. In parallel, he taught for nearly fifteen years almost without interruption: at the University Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas from 1999 to 2005, at Valenciennes from 2005 to 2006, then at Paris XI Paris-Sud, now Paris-Saclay, from 2006 to 2013. His doctoral thesis, Le cadre d’organisation des instances de représentation du personnel, supervised by Professor Bernard Teyssié, was defended at Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas in 2006 and is listed in the French national thesis catalogue.
That teaching covered most areas of private law. What remains is a way of handling cases: go back to the text, check the characterisation before discussing the regime, and never take a solution for granted because it is widespread. It is what runs through the analyses published on this site, each of them anchored in an identified code article, judgment or regulation.
The firm, since 2011
On completing his doctorate in private law, Hervé Guyader founded the firm in 2011. The choice was clear from the outset: to offer high-level expertise in an international environment, without giving up domestic business law or real estate and construction law. That broad base allows the firm to handle matters where the international dimension cannot be separated from the rest: a supply contract that turns into a corporate dispute, a cross-border real estate acquisition, a guarantee argued at once under security law and maritime law.
Professional responsibilities
In 2014, Hervé Guyader became Chair of the French Committee for International Trade Law. That role led him to work closely on free trade agreements, customs law and export licences, subjects that today run through most import-export and international sanctions matters.
In 2018, he was appointed co-chair of the Open Commission on International Trade of the Paris Bar. In 2024, he was appointed expert to the CCBE, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents the legal profession before the institutions of the European Union.
Areas of practice
International trade law
International contracts and applicable law, Incoterms and payment methods, international sanctions and compliance, foreign investment screening, extraterritoriality of US laws, European customs reform, enforcement of foreign judgments and awards. Details are set out on the international trade law page.
Maritime law
Contracts of carriage and charterparties, bills of lading and carrier liability, casualties and general average, ship arrest, port liability, pollution, marine insurance, sale and financing of ships and yachts, decarbonisation and autonomous ships. The maritime law page brings together some ten specialised pages and the firm’s practical guides.
Business law and real estate law
Companies and directors, commercial contracts, abuse of economic dependence, trade secrets, defects of consent, distressed companies on the business side. Commercial leases, co-ownership, off-plan sales and cross-border real estate acquisitions on the property side. See the business law and real estate law pages.
Publications and teaching
Hervé Guyader publishes regularly in French legal journals and in the specialised press: doctrinal studies, case notes, and opinion pieces and press contributions. The Publications page lists them.
The firm also publishes a weekly legal update in its four practice areas and a collection of downloadable practical guides, several of which are available in English. All of it is accessible from the News page.
That work first appeared in the legal reviews. The bibliography comprises seventy-five contributions published in the legal reviews, fifteen doctrinal studies and sixty case notes, in particular in Revue Lamy Droit des affaires and Jurisprudence sociale Lamy, in JurisClasseur périodique across its general, business and notarial editions, with Dalloz and in Actualité juridique droit immobilier on commercial leases. To these are added one hundred and sixty opinion pieces and press contributions published between 2014 and 2026, mostly in Les Echos and La Tribune, and an interview with the Financial Times on Europe’s response to United States sanctions.
These analyses continue in several forums. Hervé Guyader is co-chair of the Open Commission on International Trade of the Paris Bar, an expert with the think tank GenerationLibre, where he has spoken on free trade agreements, and an expert with La Fabrique de l’Exportation, to which he set out how extraterritoriality risk is best prevented. His opinion pieces on the transatlantic treaty and on trade agreements have appeared in Atlantico.
Hervé Guyader speaks at the 34th National Congress of ACE Avocats, Ensemble (La Grande-Motte, 24 and 25 September 2026), in the workshop “Unforeseeability and imprecision in contracts: statute, judge and drafter” on Thursday 24 September, alongside Emmanuel Raskin, honorary president of ACE, Frédéric Descorps-Declere, avocat at the Conseil d’État and the Cour de cassation, and Professor Dimitri Houtcieff. The workshop addresses the contract as a “bridge over the future”, hardship revision ten years after the 2016 reform of French contract law, and the determination of the subject matter. These questions are developed in the firm’s practical guide Managing the unforeseeable in international contracts.
Languages and instructions
The firm works in French and English. It regularly acts for foreign clients and for colleagues abroad who need a correspondent in France, whether for advice on French law, litigation before the French courts or arbitration seated in Paris. The French version of this page is also available.
To describe a specific situation, the contact form allows a first contact. You will receive a reply on whether the firm can act, and on how the matter would be organised.