Law as Contract Subject Matter

• Applicant: Dr. Christopher Rennig
• Subject Area: Private Law
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 536926077

Having and claiming a legal position – most people need specialised support for this. On the legal services market such support is traditionally offered by lawyers and notaries. In addition, legal support is increasingly being digitalised by the legal tech sector, for example by contract generators automatically creating contract drafts. The use of such support regularly requires a corresponding contract between their providers and those seeking legal assistance. The research project subjects these agreements to a comprehensive legal doctrinal analysis for the first time. The focus will be on whether the applicable contract law brings about a balancing of interests within contracts that have law as its subject matter. To this end, commonalities as well as differences between such contracts and their implications for legal treatment will be elaborated. Contracts for specialised legal assistance are caught between sociological and economic considerations: On the one hand, from the perspective of those seeking legal assistance, they are essential preconditions for their access to justice; on the other hand, the involvement of specialised legal intermediaries gives rise to additional transaction costs. These interdisciplinary perspectives will be integrated into the dogmatic analysis by identifying neuralgic points that affect such sociological and economic aspects of law. The project thus addresses several research gaps, as for the German judicial area no holistic legal doctrinal analysis of such contracts exists to date and, moreover, no major writings in the German-speaking world have so far dealt with the aspect of access to law, especially from the perspective of private law. The study, which is oriented towards the life cycle of a contract with law as the subject matter of the contract, examines, for example, whether the requirements for the quality of legal support are likely to have a negative influence on provider behaviour. Furthermore, it seems plausible that the ability to standardise legal support services associated with digitalisation triggers a industrialisation that coincides with a shift from legal services to legal products. This can have implications for the legal treatment of corresponding contracts, e.g. with regard to the programme of duties, the consideration or liability. With the regulation of legal services or institutions motivated by social law, the project takes into account all factors that have an influence on contractual agreements. It will become clear whether contract law can be a suitable and necessary instrument for the creation of distributive justice with regard to the use of legal positions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Canada, USA
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Katharina Pistor; Professor Dr. Peer Zumbansen