A lawyer can advise, support and assist a company director. He or she is a service provider to and is at the service of the company.

An entrepreneur, whether as a natural person like a retailer or as a company, can count on the support of a lawyer at several key times in his or her business activity, both inside and outside the court.

Let's particularly consider...

at the start of any business activity with:

a company start-up; taking on the goodwill of a business and concluding a transfer agreement; concluding a commercial lease; the negotiation and conclusion of an exclusive sales agreement (concession, etc.); litigation between partners or shareholders or administrators of a commercial company

whilst conducting business activity:

litigation with one or more competitors or suppliers; the need to initiate or to deal with insolvency actions; dissatisfaction of a contracting authority on a site; drawing up a contract or drafting documents that have legal consequences; recovery of debts; defence before a chamber of commercial enquiries when the company has payment difficulties conciliation between companies in litigation

when business activity ends:

liquidation of the company or making someone bankrupt its disposal via a transfer of capital shares;

Difficulties encountered when liquid assets come to be lacking and where the opportunity to resort to a legal reorganisation procedure manifests itself, or even when a creditor requests that its debtor is made bankrupt, can also be added to these normal or more exceptional situations regarding professional business activity.

For all these situations, the Charleroi Bar has amongst its members lawyers specialised both in commercial matters in general as well as in more specialised areas such as fiscal law, the law concerning companies in difficulty, guarantees law, commercial practices, financial law, accounting law, etc.

• Find a lawyer:: a directory of lawyers categorised by name, address or association


• Find according to preferred activity or to specialisation as listed according to the terminology used by the OBFG (Association of French- and German-speaking Bars)

• The website of the Charleroi Commercial Court

The Charleroi Commercial Court holds its introductory hearing on Monday morning from 9:00 AM in the new law courts located in Charleroi, Bd. Janson, 87.

Any entrepreneur who is worried about preparing the best defence may find some practical information there (contact details, the hearings of the Court or the chamber of commercial enquiries).

Finally, we would point out that someone who is self-employed can, by presenting a half-yearly accounting statement of his or her income and expenditure, benefit from the help of a pro deo lawyer to assist. On the other hand, a company could never have support like this available to it.