Résumé en anglais

Through several reports, the European Commission stressed the view that the constitutive rules of liberal professions might be illegimate protections against competition : therefore, as an example, alleviating the traditional rules organizing the profession of lawyers within a professional order would create a « market for legal services » and induce lower prices for consumers. That view does not resist serious scrutiny, starting from the evidence that – even if we follow standard economic theory – the effect of competition upon prices should never be considered independently from the effect upon quality ; And the handling of law by lawyers, encounters deep coordination problems, at the level of quality, which the dynamics of a market is not expected to be able to solve but which can find appropriate answers through the dynamics of a professional order