François CésureAvocat at the Paris Bar, mediator
I advise life sciences companies and strategic industries on business and regulatory law: as legal counsel, as outsourced or interim general counsel, and as a mediator.
In French verse, a hémistiche is one half of a line. The two halves are separated by a césure: a pause that gives the line its rhythm and balance.
That pause, which echoes my own name, is a space for reflection, a bridge between ideas.
I chose Hémistiches to embody this approach to law: structuring complexity, bringing interests into dialogue, and delivering clear, practical legal solutions that serve your projects.
Two complementary areas, in French law and European Union law.
Contractual, commercial and structural matters: negotiating, drafting, organising and securing your projects.
Life sciences, at the core of my practice, and industries where technology meets critical markets: nuclear, defence, aeronautics, energy, advanced electronics.
At every stage of a company’s life:
From a single matter to the entire legal function, depending on your needs.
Embedded in your team on a part-time basis: the judgement and availability of a general counsel, without the cost of a full-time hire.
CadenceThe departure of a general counsel, a restructuring, regulatory pressure, a decisive negotiation: I take charge of the legal function for as long as needed.
On a one-off matter or over the long term: analysis, negotiation, drafting, securing a transaction.
A neutral third party in a dispute, or counsel to a company engaged in mediation.
MediationThe role, carried out from outside, for organisations required to fill it without being able to recruit.
DiapasonOutsourced general counsel
The general counsel function, on a part-time basis.
In music, a cadence is the rhythm that carries a phrase and brings it to its resolution. For a company without a legal department, it is the legal time it actually needs, no more and no less: two days a month, one day a week, two days a week.
Cadence is the name of this offering: a part-time legal department, which I run drawing on more than ten years as general counsel in industry. Contracts, corporate housekeeping, regulation, data protection, pre-litigation, intellectual property: each function is covered, at your pace.
A free online test measures the cadence your company needs.
Data protection
A diapason, or tuning fork, gives the A: a fixed note, the same for everyone, to which every instrument tunes.
For health data, that note is written down: the General Data Protection Regulation, the French Public Health Code, the reference methodologies of the CNIL, the French data protection authority. It is the same for a pharmaceutical company, a digital health start-up or a clinic.
Diapason by Hémistiches is the firm’s GDPR compliance offering: bringing your set-up into tune, then holding the data protection officer function. I perform it myself, as a lawyer and certified data protection officer, for organisations required to fill the role without being able to recruit: primarily in healthcare (laboratories, biotechnology companies, medical device manufacturers, clinical trial sponsors, care providers), and more broadly wherever the data processed is sensitive.
This is not an assignment delivered once, it is a function held over time: appointment and notification to the CNIL, the record of processing activities, impact assessments, requests from data subjects, and support the day the authority makes contact.
A free online test measures the gap between your set-up and what a supervisory authority asks to see.
I act as a mediator, or as counsel to companies taking part in a mediation.
Disputes between commercial partners, disagreements within an organisation or its governance: when a relationship becomes strained or deadlocked, I work to restore calm dialogue and build lasting, confidential solutions that all parties can accept.
“After more than ten years at the heart of industry as general counsel, then ten more alongside it as a lawyer, I have come to one certainty: well conceived, the law is not a brake. It sheds light, it structures, it connects. It is a lever.”
Articles and regulatory updates from the firm, published on LinkedIn.
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