Health Care – A New Focus Area

With a gross value added of almost 364.5 billion euros, the health care industry accounts for about 12.1 percent of the German gross domestic product, and the trend is rising. Around 5.8 million people are employed in the health sector. That is more than every seventh employee.

Berlin’s success as a health metropolis is based on a 300-year-old tradition as a health and science centre. More than a dozen Nobel Prize winners worked here in the past, including researchers such as Rudolf Virchow and Robert Koch.

Advances in medicine and at the same time demographic changes in society require increasingly complex forms of care in the inpatient and outpatient sectors.

The medical profession is facing new challenges with regard to professional and interdisciplinary cooperation. New professional fields, such as physician assistants, are becoming increasingly important. In addition, there are new issues, for example in the areas of E-Health, data protection in the health sector and in the medical advertising law.

The real estate industry, too, must respond to the changing demands of an ageing society and the need for medical and nursing care when developing new projects.

We are addressing these future challenges and are very pleased that as of 01.01.2023 (more…)

Litigating in English: Will Germany introduce Court Divisions for International Commercial Matters?

Before the German courts, German is the exclusive official language (Section 184 GVG). The popularity of Germany as a forum for international legal disputes suffers as a result. In certain cases, some courts allow the parties to dispense with the use of interpreters in oral proceedings and instead hold the hearing in English. Written pleadings, minutes of hearings and all court orders and decisions must, however, continue to be written in German. Annexes, especially contracts, must be made available to the court with a German translation.

Despite the high international reputation of German law and the German judiciary, foreign contracting parties therefore shy away from choosing German law for contracts and the jurisdiction of the German courts for eventual disputes. Significant commercial law disputes are therefore often conducted abroad or before arbitral tribunals. Small and medium-sized enterprises in Germany in particular are at a disadvantage because (more…)