Who we are > Our people > Lawyers > Daniel Soulez Larivière

[version française]

In less than four years, starting in 1988, Simon Foreman was taken on, followed by Chantal Bonnard and Mauricia Courrégé. And it was a very natural progression for them to become his partners, in 1993 for Simon Foreman and in 1998 for Chantal Bonnard and Mauricia Courrégé.

"This round of recruitment was very successful , confirmed Daniel Soulez Larivière. It allowed us, at the very moment that my firm was gaining momentum, to successfully expand into the aviation, crisis management and disasters and white-collar crime sectors as well as into all the other sectors in which we are now considered to have such a high-level of expertise. I definitely met the right team at the right time..."

One example of this (among many others) is the firm’s aviation work. Daniel Soulez Larivière first started advising the French Civil Aviation Authority in the early 1980s. On joining the firm, Simon Foreman assisted him in this area, before in turn becoming one of the leading experts in this field, as is now also the case for Mauricia Courrégé.

As with the collapse of a terminal at the Aéroports de Paris and the Habsheim, Mont Sainte Odile and Concorde (Gonesse) disasters (to keep within the aviation sector), over the past fifteen years the firm has been heavily involved in a large number of sensitive cases. Nevertheless, Daniel Soulez Larivière does not wish the firm’s recognised expertise in this field to limit its members to only handling "crisis situations".

Public opinion often views the fame of a case as an indication of its critical nature, but in his opinion this is deceptive: "A crisis may attract a lot of media coverage, as was the case with the collapse of the stands at the Furiani stadium, the Rainbow Warrior case and the sinking of the Erika... But a crisis may also be something that is not public knowledge, producing very serious risks, for example for a company, leading to civil or commercial proceedings without the public ever being aware of it. Fortunately, not all critical cases attract media attention and not all of the cases that we handle for our clients are critical! However, the skills acquired by the whole of our team whilst working on these very sensitive cases are also applied in ordinary cases to help us secure a successful outcome for our clients."

Regardless of his day-to-day life as a lawyer, Daniel Soulez Larivière today is a public figure, and not only in Chambellay in the Maine et Loire where he was a councilman for twelve years. Knight of the Legion of Honour and the French National Order of Merit, he was a member of the advisory committee for the revision of the Constitution (1992-1993) and of the Commission for the review of the criminal immunity of the President of the French Republic (2002-2003). He is currently the author or co-author of more than ten books, the two most recent being: "La Justice à l’Epreuve" (Odile Jacob, 2002) co-written with Jean-Marie Coulon (at that time the Chief Justice of the Paris Court of Appeal) and "Le Temps des Victimes" (Albin Michel, 2007) co-written with Caroline Eliacheff (a psychoanalyst).

As he wrote in 1982 in "L’Avocature", lawyers may be considered "part of the forces of law and order, as a lawyers’ role is to fully defend those to be tried, and it is this that enables the system to be accepted, as everyone realises that their case has been pleaded in the best possible way." At that time, in support of this somewhat provocative idea, he had investigated the Gary Gilmore case in the United-States. Gary Gilmore had been sentenced to death and had instructed his lawyers to fulfil his death sentence by firing squad so that he could finally have his "moment of glory" denied to him during his trial (Unfortunately, this case brought back the use of the death penalty in the United States).

Today, Soulez Larivière & Associés is composed of five partners and five associates since january 2011, who are all profoundly convinced of the absolute nature of the right to a defence. Whether the firm is handling critical or non-critical cases, it has never been run and will never be run as a "legal supermarket". Regardless of the varying opinions that may be held within the firm, the partners and associates form a team who approach their work in the traditional way, as experts in their field... in keeping with the beliefs that motivated the firm’s founder more than forty years ago.