UNFAIR TERMS IN CONTRACTS CONCLUDED BY LAWYERS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION LAW AND THE COURT OF JUSTICE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION JURISPRUDENCE

The present paper aims to examine to what extent Council Directive 93/13 /EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts is applicable to contracts concluded by lawyers. This analysis addresses the lawyer's contractual position from two perspectives. The first aspect is to qualify the legal assistance contract as a contract that falls within the scope of regulating abusive clauses and implicitly qualifying lawyer as a "seller or supplier" within the meaning of the Directive. The second direction of the research concerns, on the one hand, the applicability of the European Union law and the national transposing law regarding the abusive clauses in the credit agreements concluded by a lawyer with a banking institution, and on the other hand, to what extent a lawyer's office, a legal person, can be considered a "consumer" from the point of view of the Directive. The present study focuses mainly on addressing the issues raised by the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union which, although it has not changed its optics, has qualified the lawyer both as a "seller or supplier" and as a "consumer". The academic and practical interest of the work derives from the fact that it addresses both law theorists and lawyers from all EU Member States or even the other liberal legal professions, notary, judicial executor, etc.