Algo Avocats, founded in 2021 by Sandra Tubert and Laura Ziegler, is a niche firm expert in innovation topics. The Firm operates in all areas of expertise in business law, making sure to involve lawyers who have in common an in-depth knowledge of the digital world and tech. Explanations with four hands.
Your firm is recent, however your collaboration is old
Indeed, we have been lawyers since 2011 and 2012 respectively, but have been working together since 2016; we were then collaborators in the independent French firm August Debouzy. After a few years, we decided to strike out on our own, first by creating, in October 2019, the Tech & data practice of the BCTG firm, before returning to our initial project in May 2021, by building a firm in our image, more agile, offering tailor-made support and positioned in the tech sector.
The world of innovation, large groups like the startups that make it up, is demanding, you have to know how to meet their expectations, speak the same language as them and be able to adapt to their tools and their methods of work, all with a good dose of energy and enthusiasm!
We offer our clients a real range of legal expertise and a great deal of agility. Technologies are more and more complex and evolve very quickly, so it is essential to stay awake and train on a daily basis. We also do not hesitate to rethink the way we work with our customers, the service offers we offer them and to organize training in collaboration with specialists, AI or cybersecurity engineers.
A niche firm in IT data
We are fortunate to evolve within a sector of activity that has been growing for several years now, which literally exploded with the health crisis which highlighted the need to digitize all sectors of activity, even those were quite far from it.
We feel that we are at the heart of everything that is being played out economically and politically.
If for the moment, Europe does not have GAFA or BATX to its credit, even though many European companies, large groups or start-ups, are leaders in their fields, it is trying to impose itself more and more in the legislative field, as evidenced by the current regulatory explosion at European level on these subjects (draft IA regulations, e-privacy regulations, Data Act, Data Governance Act, Digital Market Act, Digital Service Act, etc.). We are seeing divergent visions with the United States in particular and power relations that are becoming increasingly complex on these subjects, as can currently be highlighted on the issue of transfers of personal data outside the European Union.
We are of course following all these legislative projects very closely, to help our clients anticipate future developments and build innovative legal solutions with them.
Innovation is precisely the common point that we share with the clients we support, companies in the tech world, which are both major accounts and startups for whom these innovative projects are either at the heart of their business model is a way to support their growth. We thus support software publishers, IT service providers, suppliers of hardware or connected objects, but also corporate clients of these solutions or products.
IT and data are very specific areas, what services do you offer?
Technological and data issues are often very intertwined.
If we take, for example, a technology based on AI, for an AI model to be efficient, it must be fed with a lot of data, while taking into account a legislative framework which is quite restrictive. We thus help our customers to respect this legislative framework, but also to structure their business, by contractually supervising these technological creations.
We provide advice and litigation in three main areas of expertise: tech & telecom, protection of personal and digital data, internet and e-commerce.
In terms of data protection, we can intervene in the context of audits and GDPR compliance programs, as well as feasibility studies around data-centric projects, or even in the implementation of commercial prospecting or web marketing. We also support our clients in the context of crisis situations, such as personal data breaches, during CNIL checks or formal notice or CNIL sanction procedures.
Many interlocutors are concerned: legal and technical teams, internal engineers, CIOs, CEOs and operational teams. Not everyone speaks the same language, we make the link and that’s also what’s interesting about our job. We must adapt the advice, translate the law in an operational and pragmatic way.
On the tech and telecom part, we work both in the context of the deployment of digitization and dematerialization projects (electronic signature, e-payment), as well as to protect and contractually supervise the high added value technological creations of our customers. This is the case for our customers who are launching solutions integrating artificial intelligence, deep learning or solutions based on the blockchain.
We also offer more traditional support on the structuring, contractualization, negotiation of complex IT projects (SaaS contracts, through co-development contracts or those integrating the agile method or even Outsourcing contracts), but also in the structuring of distribution networks for software publishers. We also help them in the management of their pre-litigation and their IT litigation and implement crisis exit strategies.
Finally, on the digital, internet and e-commerce part, we do both audits and compliance of websites, as well as the drafting of T&Cs, T&Cs, Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy.
Many interlocutors are concerned by our subjects: legal teams, DPOs, CIOs, CEOs and business teams. Not everyone speaks the same language, we make the link and that’s also what’s interesting about our job. We must adapt the advice provided to our interlocutors and translate the law in an operational and pragmatic way.
What makes your difference?
Our strength is above all our team and our partners, who are passionate lawyers about innovative subjects and new technologies in a broad way. They are experts in their fields of activity (personal data law, new technologies law, Internet law, labor law, public law, corporate law), trained in leading law firms, both in France and abroad, who share the same vision.
Even beyond our specialized areas of expertise, our particularity lies in our in-depth knowledge of companies that are evolving in the world of digital and tech to support them for more than 10 years.
We thus have an important benchmark of industry practices, and we therefore help our clients to position themselves and/or strengthen their positioning in relation to market practices, a sector of activity and/or sectors. similar.
How do you see the future?
First, we are working on structuring our team, which has more than doubled since our creation! Our goal is also to develop our partnership system, in order to integrate into our structure, lawyers in employment law, venture capital, health law, banking regulations or public law who today make up our ecosystem. of partners, to support, under the colors of Algo, our clients in all areas of law thanks to experts with a strong appetite for the world of tech and a great understanding of the challenges of this industry.
From an activity point of view, we want to continue to support and help our customers to meet their future challenges and challenges, which will be numerous and undoubtedly exciting (development of Web 3.0, metaverse, NFT, cybersecurity issues, etc). To do this, we will continue to strengthen our training, in particular on our understanding of technological aspects, to rethink our management and organization methods, as well as our service offers to be able to offer our customers support that is ever more adapted to their needs and constraints.
