About Us
ECLA is the leading voice for European corporate lawyers, representing their interests and concerns at the highest levels of policy-making and regulation across Europe. Our 40+ years of commitment has given us a deep understanding of the European legal landscape. Our insights and presence ensure that the legal profession is not just heard but has a decisive and positive impact on the evolution of European corporate legal departments.
Our policy objectives, in addition to legal professional privilege, are set by our associations, as we aim to elevate national concerns to a broader audience.
Our Goals
Legal work in 2025 has been standardised. We all use the same tools to communicate, to manage documents, to draft contracts. We use the same clauses, upholding the same European values, often using the same legal English terminology with cross-border agreements. Our legal teams look similar, dependent on size, and our expertise shines in our domain and industry knowledge.
This means that European company lawyers should share their experiences and knowledge on a pan-European level as much as possible. With new innovations promising to transform the legal department coming every few years, the only way that we can ensure that our operations retain the required legal stability is by sharing knowledge and best practices, whether it concerns leadership, AI tools, legal operations or whatever else the future holds.
Our Activities and Benefits
ECLA operates under a double mandate – to represent company lawyers on an European level and to provide services to company lawyers in a pan-European manner. This means intervening with the Court of Justice of the European Union, in conjunciton with our respective member associations, whenever the corporate legal profession needs clarification or definition within court proceedings.
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History
ECLA was founded in 1983 to address a critical gap in the European legal landscape. What began in 1980 as an initiative to share cross-border best practices quickly revealed stark disparities in the professional status of in-house counsel across different jurisdictions. Galvanised by these inequalities and the restrictive A.M. & S. ruling of 1982, ECLA was established to bridge jurisdictional divides and provide a unified voice for the recognition and rights of company lawyers at the European level.