The firm
History
The firm was established in the mid-1940s by Professor Edouard Bours, who taught fiscal law at the University of Liège. It rose swiftly to the status of the Liège bar’s first specialist law firm, a development that allows it to reap the benefit of extensive experience in the field of business law today.
On top of fiscal law, the firm successively opened itself to corporate law and commercial law. Its renown has attracted associations with top specialists in every subject area. For several years, it was an integral part of the firm Loeff Claeys Verbeke. There, the partners who direct the firm’s departments acquired the professionalism and modern working methods that are specifically characteristic of major international law firms.
Today, LDT is a multidisciplinary, modern and dynamic law firm that offers its clientele a vast array of bespoke services in the various fields of business law.
Fields of expertise
The expertise of LDT covers all legal subject areas and problems with which stakeholders in economic life may find themselves confronted, and is organised into three distinct departments.
Services offered
In line with the adage, “prevention is better than cure”, our firm offers you its in-depth knowledge of legal mysteries that you will need to hear before taking any important decision, in professional and private life alike. While litigation forms a major part of our work, we avoid disputes for our clients as often as we can, via the practice of negotiation, the provision of advice and optimum contract drafting.
We also offer you an auditing service – in-depth analysis of each specific situation – in order to provide you with the assurance that no potential litigation or latent problem looks set to thwart your plans, or to determine the exact purpose of what you wish to acquire or divest.
We practise the art of negotiation, which allows us to advise you and to draw up, at very short notice if need be, the various titles and agreements that you require.
We are able to represent you in various circumstances: company general meetings, signing of agreements, interviews with civic servants, procedures through ministries and administrations, contacts with technical experts, summonses and hearings, arbitration, etc.
We will provide your legal defence when this proves to be necessary, before any form of jurisdiction.
Assets
Every lawyer at our firm specialises in a particular field of the law and keeps constantly abreast of all developments in the subject area. Equipped with outstanding university references and post-graduate degrees, our firm’s members actively take part in and contribute to seminars and publish scientific articles. Our employees are selected on the basis of criteria of excellence in their university and post-graduate training, knowledge of languages, ability to work in a team, talent for communication and interpersonal skills.
Our firm maintains privileged ties with the University of Liège. Several lawyers at our firm are also course directors, university lecturers, a professor, assistants or employees at the University of Liège, in their subject areas of predilection.
By seeking to reduce the cost of their intervention, there is a high risk of the lawyers performing their legal analyses and addressing their defence facts too quickly and without carrying out any in-depth doctrinal and jurisprudential research. This makes for a very clear opportunity to call upon the services of specialists and also academics. In actual fact, as part of their regular, written or oral contributions, at symposia and conferences as well as in publications, such specialists are of course required to be properly versed in doctrine and jurisprudence matters. Yet, this permanent training work is not invoiced as part of the dossiers.
We work regularly as a team with professionals in accounting, company audits, the notarial profession, architecture, engineering, etc. As a general policy, we maintain numerous contacts with various economic stakeholders, regional and municipal authorities and jurisdictions. This allows us:
- to bring a global solution to our dossiers, without necessarily limiting ourselves to the law and while taking account of the technical, economic, financial and human aspects;
- to have an acute perception of the needs of our clients and good knowledge of the judges before whom we plead our cases.
As we go about our business, we are permanently guided by our clients’ interests and specificities. Our relationship of trust with our clients is founded, among other factors, on extended availability, with our secretary’s office being open every working day from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. It is our intention to handle all cases entrusted to us within a brief space of time, as far as possible, and to do so at a consistent level of professionalism.
Our law firm is apolitical and non-confessional, and as such advocates compliance with strict ethical values and values of independence in its relations with clients and economic and institutional stakeholders.