About

The French arm of ManpowerGroup represents a quarter of the multinational human resources consulting group’s total global operations. Since Manpower opened its first France-based offices in 1957, the company has helped to shape French employment patterns, particularly by playing a key role in defining French labour laws relating to interim work. The legal aspects of ManpowerGroup’s France-based operations are handled by a team of more than 30 lawyers and seven support staff and led by experienced chief legal officer Béatrix Laurent-Moulin. The team is further divided into five sub-teams headed by experienced legal professionals such as Antoine Jacquet, who heads the business sub-team responsible for corporate affairs and M&As. He joined ManpowerGroup France in 2016 following what Laurent-Moulin describes as a ‘drastic increase in the volume of work we handle’. The team has been praised for handling the extra workload in the face of a highly regulated environment and wholesale changes to the nature of French labour law in the areas of anti-corruption, employment contracts and data protection. It has also shown an ability to innovate by using new software and IT to help streamline its operations and deliver legal training. According to Laurent-Moulin, is also a profit centre for the company, helping to reclaim significant amounts of cash while avoiding legal costs. The team is also recognised for its pragmatism: it recently successfully resolved a significant dispute by requesting guidance from the Supreme Court in advance rather than waiting for costly and lengthy court decisions.