The Legal Infrastructure of Rearmament: Which Law Firms Make Defence Transactions Executable
A documentary map of the legal advisers behind Europe’s defence transactions
European rearmament is usually described through budgets, orders, factories, acquisitions and public companies. Yet every major defence transaction also depends on a legal-execution chain that determines whether industrial intent can become enforceable ownership, cleared capital deployment, transferable technology, valid procurement continuity and authorised export capacity. In defence, a signed agreement is rarely sufficient. Sensitive assets must pass through merger control, foreign-investment screening, national-security review, golden power procedures, export-control analysis, sanctions checks, procurement rules and, in contested cases, administrative or judicial scrutiny. The law firms that appear at these gates are therefore not incidental service providers. They are part of the infrastructure through which European rearmament becomes legally executable.
This report maps that infrastructure through public documentary evidence. It first defines the legal gates that shape defence transactions, from corporate execution to FDI screening, export control, procurement continuity and litigation. It then examines verified transaction dossiers in defence, aerospace, naval systems, munitions, cyber, AI and dual-use technology, identifying which firms acted, for whom, in which role and under which jurisdictional conditions. The final section draws the analytical map: global transaction counsel, national-security clearance specialists, export-control and sanctions teams, procurement lawyers, public-law advisers and domestic firms embedded in national defence-industrial systems. The result is not a reputation ranking, but a source-based account of the legal firms that make rearmament transactions executable.