The seam, drawn out.
Cross-border law is where most contracts quietly fail. These pieces take the concepts that matter at the EU’s edge — foreign entry through Romania, and the common-law/civil-law seam — and turn them into something you can see and act on — not legal advice, but the map before the advice.
EU AI Act × PLD recast — a structured impact analysis for regulated-product companies
Three converging regimes, four product-category risk profiles, a five-stage methodology and indicative pricing.
The Human in the Loop Is a Legal Role
Engineering calls it a checkpoint. From 2 August 2026, EU law treats it as a duty — Article 14 of the AI Act asks for a human whose oversight is effective, and what that word demands decides whether the person in the loop carries authority or merely absorbs blame.
When Firmware Fails
A second-hand e-bike charging in a London hallway burns a family out of their home. Somewhere inside it, a line of code failed to say stop. From December 2026, EU law treats that code as a product — and the mystery of which part failed becomes the manufacturer’s problem, not the victim’s.
The Product You Didn’t Know You Shipped
You don’t run a factory — you ship software, or a model behind an API. From December 2026 the EU’s new Product Liability Directive calls that a product, drops strict liability on it, and asks who inside the Union answers for it.
The Legal Architecture of an IT Acquisition
Buy a software company and you do not buy its code or its customers — you buy the paper that says it owns them. Five layers where an IT deal’s value actually lives, and how each one is read.
When the Building Is Still on Paper
Forward purchases commit a buyer to a building that does not yet exist. The price has to follow the proof. Four phases, two mortgages running in opposite directions across the deed, and conditions precedent that pay in non-payment, not in litigation.
Standards as Code: The Gate Behind the Signature
A sign-off practice accumulates liability with every signature. Here is the runtime governance kernel that makes the firm’s standards non-bypassable — three gates, deny-by-default, and an audit trail that writes its own defence.
The Legal Architecture of a Regulated App Flow
When an app offers a regulated product, its screens become legal acts. Five disciplines — roles, the border crossing, appearance as evidence, the duty sequence, the drift map — for any regulated vertical.
DORA: What the Bank’s Addendum Can Actually Demand
When a bank hands its ICT supplier a “DORA addendum”, most of it is negotiable. DORA fixes a floor of contractual terms — a lot of what arrives sits well above it.
Performance Bonds & Delay Penalties
When can a public-procurement beneficiary use the performance bond to cover delay penalties — and when has it quietly lost that right? A working-contracts brief.
KYC & AML for Brokers in Romania
A short brief on Romania’s tightening KYC/AML regime for brokers, first shared as a deck on LinkedIn. Swipe through it below.
Who Decides Where Your Estate Goes
Civil law reserves a share of an estate for close family; common law lets you leave it as you wish. For a family straddling Romania and a common-law country, that clash is the whole game.
The Trust That Isn’t
An English party reaches the point where, at home, it would all be “held on trust” — and the Romanian side pauses. The word translates; the structure does not. Here is why, and what Romanian practice builds instead.
From the US to the Single Market
American companies rarely set out to enter Romania — they set out to reach Europe. Romania is one of the cleaner doors in, but not everything a US business carries across the Atlantic survives the crossing.
Entering the EU Through Romania
For a non-EU business, setting up in Bucharest isn’t entering Romania — it’s stepping into the single market, and a whole stack of European law switches on at once.
The Post-Brexit Enforcement Gap
An English judgment used to travel into the EU almost automatically. Since 2021 it does not. Here is what changed — drawn as a map you can act on.
Two Ways of Seeing a Contract
Civil law reads the code; common law reads the bargain. The same clause can carry different weight on each side of the seam — visualised.
How Borrowers Quietly Rewrote the Loan
Over two cycles, borrower-side terms in LMA-style leveraged loans drifted from tight maintenance covenants to incurrence-based flexibility — and the real fight moved to the baskets and the collateral.