A fair question, not an awkward one
If you've reached this page because you're wondering whether Maître Bensimhon — or any French lawyer who has contacted you about an unpaid invoice — is genuinely who they say they are, you're asking exactly the right question. International debt recovery is an area fraudsters target deliberately: unsolicited emails demanding an "advance fee" to release a supposed judgment, invented law firms with copied websites, and pressure to pay quickly by wire transfer to an unfamiliar account are all real, documented scams aimed at foreign creditors.
The good news is that verifying a genuine French attorney takes a few minutes, costs nothing, and doesn't depend on trusting the lawyer's own website — it relies on an independent regulator.
Step 1: the Paris Bar's own directory
Every attorney admitted to practice in Paris is listed in the Barreau de Paris's public directory — a database run by the Bar itself, not by any individual lawyer or firm, which is precisely why it's a reliable check.
Go to avocatparis.org/annuaire and search "Bensimhon". An active, genuine entry confirms admission to the Paris Bar. If a lawyer who has contacted you doesn't appear at all, that is a serious warning sign.
This works for any French lawyer, not only this firm — if someone else representing themselves as a French avocat has contacted you, run the same search on their name before sending anything.
Step 2: signals a fraudulent operation is unlikely to produce
Beyond the Bar directory, a handful of things exist only because French law regulates real attorneys — they are hard for an impersonator to fake convincingly.
Published court decisions
Anonymised PDFs of decisions actually obtained for clients — court, date, and sums recovered — are published here. A fake operation cannot produce real judgments in its own name.
A mandatory written fee agreement
French law requires a signed fee agreement before any billable work begins — a legal obligation on the attorney, not a courtesy. It sets out scope and pricing before you owe anything.
A real, visitable office
The firm's office is at 43 avenue Foch, 75116 Paris. Visits are welcome by appointment — see our contact page to arrange one.
An independent point of contact
The Ordre des avocats de Paris (the Bar itself) can also be reached directly through avocatparis.org if you would rather ask the regulator than take a lawyer's word for it.
Step 3: common-sense checks that cost nothing
A few habits catch most impersonation attempts before you need to check anything official:
- Match the email domain to the website. Correspondence from a genuine firm comes from that firm's own domain, not a generic free email address.
- Be wary of upfront "release" or "unblocking" fees. A real attorney's pricing is transparent and published in advance — see our fees page — not demanded suddenly to "release" funds already supposedly recovered.
- Never send money to a personal account. Payments to a law firm go to the firm, under its own name, not to an individual's personal bank details.
- Call, don't just email. A genuine office answers its published phone number during French business hours.
If you've already been asked to pay an unexplained upfront sum to release a debt supposedly already recovered on your behalf, stop and verify independently before paying anything further — that specific pattern is one of the most common debt-recovery scams targeting foreign creditors.
Frequently asked questions
It's the single strongest check, since it's run independently by the regulator. Combining it with the other signals on this page — published decisions, a written fee agreement, a real office — leaves very little room for doubt.
Run the same search on their name in the Paris Bar directory (or the directory of whichever French Bar they claim to belong to). Every French Bar maintains a public directory of its own members.
Visits are by appointment, which lets us make sure Maître Bensimhon is actually available to meet you rather than you making the trip for nothing. Get in touch via the contact page to arrange a time.
Because the fraud patterns that do exist in this space specifically target creditors who can't easily double-check a foreign lawyer in person. The Bar directory removes that gap — it works exactly the same whether you're across town or across an ocean.
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