The Autorité de la concurrence, at the request of the French government, issued an opinion on July 23, 2024, regarding a draft decree that aims to integrate lawyers into a mechanism for collecting economic data from legal professions. This mechanism is intended to assist in setting regulated fees for lawyers providing representation or postulation services.

The authority emphasized that the data collection should only apply to lawyers who regularly offer fee-paying postulation services and recommended conducting an impact assessment to evaluate the feasibility of including branch offices in this data collection.

Following the authority's recommendations, the final decree, adopted on June 18, 2025, stipulates that data will only be collected from lawyers who have performed at least five postulation services subject to regulated fees. The integration of branch offices into the mechanism was ultimately excluded based on the authority's findings regarding accounting practices.

The decree aims to end the previous exemption for lawyers from the data collection mechanism, which had been in place despite the regulated fees established by French law. The authority's recommendations were reflected in the final decree and ministerial order, ensuring a more streamlined approach to data collection from legal professionals.