Regulated professions.

Practising independently does not mean facing legal and tax complexities alone.

Members of the regulated professions (doctors, surgeons, pharmacists, veterinarians, architects, lawyers, chartered accountants, notaries, consulting engineers) operate in a regulated, technical and demanding environment. Their activity is not limited to their professional practice alone: it creates a business in its own right, with its structures, partners, employees, assets and tax obligations.

Bruzzo Dubucq supports members of the regulated professions at every stage of their career, with a strong conviction: the success of a professional practice depends as much on the quality of its legal and tax structuring as on the quality of its professional work. Our Regulated professions department operates at the crossroads of our tax and corporate expertise, to deliver integrated, precise advice with no blind spots.

Areas of expertise.

Structuring professional practice

Choosing the structure through which to practise is one of the most far-reaching decisions in a professional's career. SEL, SPFPL, SCM, SCI, SCP: each vehicle carries distinct legal, tax, ethical and wealth consequences, and no single corporate form suits every situation.

Setting up a medical practice as a SELARL or a SELAS does not follow the same logic as organising a multi-site pharmacy or pairing an SPFPL with an SCI to hold the professional premises.

It is this level of detail, specific to each profession and each project, that our lawyers master: they design bespoke legal structures, draft articles of association in line with the requirements of the professional bodies, and support you through to registration with the relevant registers.

Taxation of professionals

Turning professional income into lasting personal wealth is the central challenge for practice owners. Between BNC (non-commercial profits), corporation tax, dividends, social security charges and optimisation schemes, there are many levers, and mistakes in the choices made are costly and often irreversible.

A doctor who is a partner in a SELARL, a pharmacist receiving rent from his SCI through his SPFPL, an architect in a SELAS wishing to prepare for retirement: each situation calls for a specific analysis, far removed from standardised schemes.

Our tax lawyers structure the practice owner's remuneration, optimise the balance between salary and dividends, apply the exemption regimes available for business capital gains and defend taxpayers against the tax authorities at every stage of the procedure.

Succession, sale and admission of partners

Selling shares in an SEL, welcoming a young partner into a medical practice or organising one's retirement are transactions that simultaneously bring into play legal, tax and professional-body mechanisms whose interaction largely determines the value recovered, or lost.

Valuing a professional client base, drafting a sale agreement including an earn-out on fees, structuring the gradual admission of an associate who is to become a partner: these transactions demand technical mastery that our lawyers bring to every deal, securing both the contractual mechanics and their tax effects.

Governance and relations between partners

In a professional practice, tensions between partners threaten both the business and the professional activity, two dimensions that the law, the articles of association and shareholders' agreements must protect together. Prevention, through precise drafting of the founding documents, is always better than litigation.

Our lawyers draft the contractual tools that anticipate these situations (partners' agreements, exclusion clauses, collaboration agreements, separation agreements) and, in the event of an open crisis, step in to defend your rights and organise a controlled exit.

Litigation for professionals

Professional practice carries its own specific litigation risks, at the intersection of professional regulation, tax law and administrative law. An inspection by the ARS (regional health agency) of a doctor's practice conditions, an URSSAF reassessment reclassifying remuneration paid through the SEL, a challenge by the tax authorities to the tax regime chosen: these proceedings call for a technical and strategic defence, conducted by lawyers who know both the rules of the professional bodies and the mechanics of litigation.

Our lawyers act both at the amicable stage and before the competent courts (Judicial Courts, administrative courts, professional disciplinary bodies) to defend the interests of members of the regulated professions with determination and method.

Employment law for professional practices

Medical secretaries, dental assistants, salaried nurses, technical staff: professionals who are employers must reconcile the requirements of the Labour Code with the specific constraints of their activity, often without a legal department or HR team to support them.

Bringing the employment contracts of a group practice into compliance, handling a dismissal procedure where continuity of care is at stake, negotiating a mutually agreed termination with a salaried professional associate: our lawyers handle these matters with an approach tailored to the world of the regulated professions, in both advisory work and Employment Tribunal litigation.