Syndic

A Counsel ( AltGr. Σύνδικος, manager of a matter ') is a lawyer who represents part of a permanent employment relationship his working time and force a non- lawyer's employer as a company, association or a professional corporation and Foundation.

Unlike a legal adviser who can perform its activities without license to practice law, in German law, a general counsel is always permitted at a Bar Association and maintains his own law firm. A senior or senior position is generally not required with the position as general counsel for the judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court in the so-called second career decision.

Alternative names are a corporate lawyer and in-house lawyer.

Vocational

Initiated by the Federal Constitutional Court so-called double professional or vocational secondary theory that the general counsel activities and the legal profession represented two different forms of professional practice, was softened in the meantime, more and more, and almost abolished in the result. The Court looked at the activities of the General Counsel as the single form of legal profession. That case-law of the ECJ, however, actively opposed in the matter C-550/07 P Akzo / Nobel and in 2011 the Supreme Court and has maintained the strict dual profession theory. Critics accuse the high court before going to close his eyes to the reality and the actual conditions. The further development of case law on this remains to be seen.

House lawyers advise their employer (the company, the association or foundation ) normally in all areas of business law, such as on trademark and copyright issues relating to insurance contracts and cases, contract management and monitoring, to liability and antitrust matters in acquisitions and disposals. Large companies employ in-house counsel and human resources, in the tax department, and in the patent, trademark and licensing department.

History

Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

In the Middle Ages and the early modern period a counsel was responsible for the legal affairs of a city or a local authority. He advised Mayor and Council in legal matters and wrote legal opinions on their behalf. Often there are legal experts who at a university the common law (ius commune) - mostly Roman law ( Corpus juris Civilis ), but occasionally also canon law - had studied. Decreed a city a city clerk ( head office ) with appropriate legal training, he sided with the tasks of the Syndic. In addition to the urban syndics there was the landscaping syndics. These were employed by the stands as legal counsel.

Syndic in the Hanseatic towns

The Syndic (formerly also Stadtsyndicus ) in Bremen or Hamburg Senatssyndicus participated in the free cities of Bremen and Hamburg to Lübeck model as the legal scholars and jurists later a government office true. Today, the site is also comparable to that of a State Council and representatives of a senator in his office and in Bremen in the Senate. See also:

• Syndic of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck as public office until 1851
• Senatssyndicus in Hamburg as a state office
• Syndic of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen as a state official.

German Legal Profession

German house counsel may gem for their employers. § 46 Federal Lawyers' Act not act in court or before an arbitral tribunal in its capacity as a lawyer.

Comparable freelance lawyers in-house counsel can rid society of the statutory pension insurance and then pay contributions to a pension fund for specific professions also found in the German pension insurance. House counsel, so usually house lawyers and corporate lawyers have, acc. § 6 para 1 No. 1 of the SGB VI entitled to the grant of such relief. Requirement is that they are a company lawyer quite creatively, rather promoting, legal advice and quite crucial and the employer confirms this.

As the General Counsel as an attorney must always maintain a firm § 27, in many cases, however, operates only in minimal extent or not at all as a freelance lawyer, many Syndics have a so-called living room office. That is, they have reported their private residence as a firm in the Bar Association. Alternatively, it is also allowed them to set up their office in the premises of the employer, without having to install a practice shield, as far as the consent of the employer.

The bar associations hold to the double vocational or secondary vocational theory. They go above and beyond the assumption that the profession of the main job, and the work in the company is the subsidiary activity and the main occupation must not stand. Mandatory requirement of compatibility of corporate activity with the profession of a lawyer here is a sufficient and irrevocable consent and declaration of exemption of the employer, as can be ensured only that the legal profession can continue to be exercised free from the other activities and through the ancillary activity no barriers be set.