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Hervé Guyader, avocat in Paris: profile and practice

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.

Describe your situationPractice areas
Hervé Guyader, avocat at the Paris Bar
28 yearsof legal experience
Doctorof private law, Paris II Panthéon-Assas
2011admitted to the Paris Bar
14 yearsof university teaching
Over 1,000matters handled

An international practice

Expert to the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, President of the CFDCI, co-chair of the Open Commission on International Trade of the Paris Bar.

  • France63%
  • Europe outside France13%
  • Asia7%
  • North America6%
  • Africa4%
  • Middle East4%
  • Latin America3%

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 fourteen 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. He sits on its International Legal Services Committee, which deals with market access for legal services and the mobility of third-country lawyers.

He is a candidate in the elections to the Paris Bar Council (Conseil de l’Ordre) on 15 and 17 December 2026.

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, supplemented by dedicated pages on exequatur and international arbitration.

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 the specialised pages and practical guides in this area.

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.

He also speaks at professional conferences and congresses. On 24 September 2026, at the 34th national congress of the ACE in La Grande-Motte, he led the workshop “Unforeseeability and imprecision in contracts: statute, judge and drafter”, alongside Emmanuel Raskin, honorary president of the ACE, Frédéric Descorps-Declere, avocat at the Conseil d’État and the Cour de cassation, and Dimitri Houtcieff, agrégé professor of law. His contribution addressed hardship in international law, in private international law, international trade law and maritime law; these questions are developed in the practical guide Managing the unforeseeable in international contracts.

Op-eds in Les Echos

Between 2018 and 2022, Hervé Guyader published 48 op-eds in “Le Cercle”, the opinion section of Les Echos, France’s leading business daily. Around twenty of them deal with international trade, sanctions and the extraterritorial reach of US law. The selection below links to the original articles, in French:

All his op-eds are listed on his author page at Les Echos.

Op-eds in La Tribune

He also writes for La Tribune, another French business daily, mainly on trade policy and international tensions (articles in French):

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.

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