Two lawyers from different countries had a chance to express themselves at the same event: a high profile series of speeches organised by a University about the highly demanding topic of banking law. Here is an account of their adventure and how they made the best out of this opportunity.
Eurojuris is all about lawyers from different countries working together, but two of our members had the occasion to meet for the same project: a conference organised by a Southern French university in the Mediterranean harbour town of Toulon.
Philippe Barbier (EJ France) knows this university very well. 'I was a student there,' he says. 'It was a long time ago, in 1970, and I remember when it was created. Its first president was a member of the French Council of State, he was an incredible man, he had a strong network and brought a lot of speakers from outside. The Law University of Toulon kept this tradition alive.' Now a speaker himself, Philippe had the occasion to be reunited with this friend Pietro Bembo (EJ Italy).
'I have been friend with Philippe for a long time,' says Pietro. 'We started the first Franco-Italian practice group together. He speaks good Italian and studied comparative French-Italian law. We often worked on the same cases with a lot of mutual satisfaction'.
The conference organised by the University was called ‘La banque dans tous ses états’ (‘Banking in all its states’). As an expert in litigation and debt recovery procedures as well as commercial contracts with banks, Pietro was a logical choice for a guest. 'It was a high level conference', he says, 'with people from Belgium, Morocco, Senegal... and also a delegate from the French central bank'.
The conference had its own style: each speaker had fifteen minutes to explain his or her point of view, which according to Philippe 'gave an exciting rythm to the event, we had to answer questions from the audience in a short time, which was exciting.' In order to make the best of his limited speaking time, Philippe devised a little play with someone acting as a lawyer for a debtor, while Philippe himself was the lawyer for the bank. 'This short act made everyone understand my point, which is that in the end the bank always wins. The defense of debtors was wiped away'. Philippe is also a teacher at Toulon university, where he gives a class about bank debt recovery to students in their final year before gaining their Master's degree. Pietro made a similar point for Italian law.
The audience was not only made of students. 'This university is very open to everyone and their conferences are not necessarily aimed at scholars. I recognised colleagues from the bar in the audience, banking professionals were also there.'
The University will be publishing the speeches in paper format very soon, should you wish to read more about what happened at the conference.
