State, Administration, Public Undertakings

The public sector and its undertakings participate in many different ways in economic life. They are subject to special regulations as to their organisation and actions and place the highest demands on competent legal advice. Luther can provide advice that hits the mark, in all relevant areas of law.

As one of Germany’s largest commercial law firms, we benefit from our colleagues’ extensive expertise, which we have used to put together a team of specialists to advise the public sector in the relevant special fields. In particular, our Public Services team has a wealth of experience in procedural law and in structuring transactions, gained from many years of practical client work and from research and in-depth studies in the relevant specialist areas of law. The members of the team collaborate closely across locations and disciplines, which allows them to provide solutions from the entire range of public business law, the law governing public security and order and all special subjects. The result is efficient, tailor-made structuring solutions that hit the mark.

Our clients include the federal government, the German states, municipalities, and chambers, as well as their undertakings. Luther advises them on the following issues:

Our range of advisory services

In the area of municipal law, we focus above all on municipal business law, municipal levies law and municipal institutions law. We also give special consideration to municipal constitutional law, municipal electoral law and direct democratic rights to participate, for example, in the form of local petitions and local referendums, and municipal regulatory law.

The focus of our services is on the privatisation and reorganisation of corporations and on matters related to the law governing the status of civil servants (and judges), including their official assessment, advancement and legal actions brought by competitors, but also on advising employers in disciplinary proceedings, as well as on other matters pertaining to civil service law.

In this field of law, we concentrate in particular on the professional laws and regulations applicable to physicians, dentists, psychotherapists, veterinarians and dispensing chemists, as well as to architects and engineers, providing both practical advice and representing our clients before professional and administrative courts.

We advise on all aspects of organisational law relating to other legal persons under public law, in particular, the legal relations of professional associations and of universities and university hospitals, and also on the law governing the status of university staff and on the corporation right of professors and university lecturers.

In the area of state liability law, the focus is on official liability and damages for breach of quasi-contractual and pre-contractual special legal relations, for example, the duty to provide assistance, recourse claims, public compensation law, and expropriation and similar interventions.

Special attention is given to general and special police law and the law governing public security and order, including the law relating to the right to assemble and hold events, which is characterised by its great relevance to the public.

Administrative law with its wide array of special laws is inextricably linked with constitutional law. Constitutional law always plays at least a complementary role and is often even of paramount importance. When working for our clients, we always bear in mind and give due consideration to these aspects, which tend to be of a fundamental nature.

We support the public sector as well as investors, sponsors and banks in the design of public-private partnerships (PPPs). Luther has established a wealth of knowledge and competencies through the realisation of numerous PPP projects, particularly in building construction (new buildings, modifications, renovation). Luther has been, and still is, involved in a multitude of pilot projects (schools, hospitals, town halls, public swimming pools, penitentiaries, etc.) in Germany. Our factor of success when advising on PPP models lies in our interdisciplinary approach to consulting, which consolidates the necessary project-specific qualifications (calculation of profitability, financing recommendations, civil engineering evaluation and support, legal and tax advice). Our specialists are used to adopting an interdisciplinary approach with economic advisors and civil engineers in order to devise and implement the right solution for each project.

In the area of public business law there will be a focus over the next few years on issues relating to environment law. They are becoming increasingly more important to companies at each stage of operations, but also in the context of construction and planning law. In industrialised countries, this is due to a growing environmental awareness, the capital market‘s demand for companies to undertake to protect the environment and as a result of conflicts arising from the close coexistence of industries and usage requiring protection. In addition to the above, climate change calls for radical changes in fossil fuel consumption while acceptance of technologies regarded as critical (such as nuclear power or CCS) is simultaneously decreasing. Agricultural land needs to be preserved for the production of food for a growing world population and also for the production of renewable raw materials. The European Commission is, therefore, aspiring to reorganise the European economies into so-called „low carbon economies“.

On the one hand, these developments entail considerable risks for the companies concerned and a number of other companies that specialise in or depend on the production and use of fossil energy (such as the oil industry, the air transport sector, car producers). On the other hand, considerable opportunities for companies offering environment protection products and services are being created. This affects, in particular, the construction of energy efficient machines and equipment as well as the creation of plants for the production of renewable energy and also the real estate industry, insofar as it considerably reduces the real estate industry‘s energy needs and replaces them with renewable energy. This can also be advantageous for power plant manufacturers offering combined heat and power as well as for the mass transport in local and long-distance rail traffic.