» A slap « . This is how Laure Heinich qualifies the complaint for « slanderous denunciation » that Patrick Poivre d’Arvor filed on April 27 against the sixteen women who accuse him of harassment, sexual assault or rape. The lawyer, who represents some of the complainants, insists on the symbolic brutality of the gesture. She also recalls that the fallen star of TF1’s 20 Hours had already filed a similar complaint in February, which was dismissed two days later: « Nobody is fooled by his attempts at intimidation. »
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Violence against women has become one of the subjects of this law firm which defends the victims of former Secretary of State Georges Tron, those who have filed a complaint against Jean-Jacques Bourdin, or the actress Judith Chemla in a domestic violence case. On the eve of the presidential election, in a column published in « Le Monde » on April 9, Laure Heinich already denounced, with her associates Dorothée Bisaccia-Bernstein, Karine Bourdié and Clotilde Lepetit, the silence of the political world: « There is there someone, possibly a candidate, to discuss the situation since men still kill women as much? […] Is there someone to give themselves the means, to give us the means, to act on the causes and to protect women rather than only thinking of punishing men? A cry of anger from which they expected nothing, and they were not disappointed. The day after the debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, Dorothée Bisaccia-Bernstein noted: “Violence against women, supposed to be the great cause of the five-year term, was not the subject of more than a minute of discussion… »
However, until 2020, none of them claimed to be a “militant” feminist. Even Clotilde Lepetit, the most committed, the one who opened the reception center for victims within the association Ni putes ni submitted, the one who provides free consultations at the Bichat hospital and a legal aid office on the Aligre market, in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, spontaneously, would not have used the term. Defense as these lawyers have conceived of it since they have been practicing has no gender: they defended victims of gang rape in the Fontenay-sous-Bois rotating case just as they defended Youssouf Fofana, known as « the executioner of the barbarian gang”, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Ilan Halimi; they defended Rwandan women who were allegedly raped by French soldiers during the 1994 genocide, as they defend a famous artist accused of harassment. “I defend the victims and the culprits in the name of the right of every citizen to be defended, insists Karine Bourdié. I defend them all the better because I know what’s going on in the other person’s head. »
But a changeover takes place at the time of the controversy around Roman Polanski, filmmaker accused of rape and sexual assault by several women, at the Cesar ceremony, in 2020. Dorothée Bisaccia-Bernstein, Karine Bourdié and Laure Heinich want to sign a support text for the director, Clotilde Lepetit refuses. Because the #MeToo wave and the liberation of speech have been there. Because, sometimes, the time comes into dissonance with the rights of the defense. Because the cause of women is a fight in its own right. Since they have known each other, this is the first time that they have had a major disagreement… After a long discussion, Clotilde Lepetit convinces her associates. Since then, 7 Bac Avocats has assumed its desire to devote more and more of its time to women.
It was not the women’s cause that bound them, it was friendship. Laure Heinich, Clotilde Lepetit and Dorothée Bisaccia-Bernstein met when they passed the eloquence competition of the Conference of Lawyers of the Paris Bar, class of 2006. Laure Heinich finished first. As such, she is one of the granddaughters of Arnaud Montebourg, received first in 1993. Because joining the Conference means becoming a member of a huge family, where those who preceded you are your ancestors and those who will succeed you your descendants. As such, Clotilde Lepetit and Dorothée Bisaccia-Bernstein are the sisters of Laure, who is one of Karine Bourdié’s aunts (class of 2007). We get lost in their line. We just understand that the bond is strong, old, and that this idea of professional family, between them, is not an empty word. The practice is their second home. In the office of Dorothée Bisaccia-Bernstein, on two pages torn from “Jacques le Fataliste et son maître”, by Diderot, her ex-husband added to the marker: “Here, we change the end of the story. As for Laure Heinich, she receives between two street art paintings, a speech by Robert Badinter annotated by her hand and a shelf of figurines – Betty Boop as a judge, a convict Smurf and a bath duck in a lawyer’s suit.
“We plead when we sleep, we plead in the street, we plead in the car…”
This chosen family, which shares holidays and files, Dorothée Bisaccia-Bernstein, Karine Bourdié, Laure Heinich and Clotilde Lepetit have made it like a cocoon, a place where « they are warm », the closed circle where they draw strength to defend humanity in what is most brutal and damaged: specialists in criminal law, they only deal with crimes and misdemeanors punishable by a criminal court or an assize court. A job that all four of them now say is “in their blood”; a profession that the profession has long reserved for men, on the pretext that the cases concerned were “too hard” for women – too much blood, too much violence. But Dorothée Bisaccia-Bernstein remembers, amused, that she was the only one who did not turn a blind eye when, as a student at the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Law in Paris, she attended the unfolding with her male comrades. of an autopsy. As for Karine Bourdié and Laure Heinich, they went to good school, trained by one of the pioneers of criminal lawyers, Françoise Cotta. Since then, as Clotilde Lepetit summarizes, “we plead when we sleep, we plead in the street, we plead in the car… We are never on a break! »
However, only Karine Bourdié has always wanted to practice law – the others have arrived there in a roundabout way. Clotilde Lepetit discovered a passion for criminal matters at the Conference, a year during which the twelve winners of the competition are responsible for ensuring the urgent and free defense of the most deprived: committed automatically, she therefore found herself the next day in a situation of pleading before a jury of assizes, when she had never practiced… Of course, she had learned the trade at the Bar School, but after a year in fashion and another in the ‘education. At the time, this disjointed career, coupled with her commitment to Ni putes nisubmissives, frightened the profession: before passing the Conference competition, she struggled to obtain a place as an associate in a cabinet. Later, she worked part-time with Laure and Karine, whom she left to set up on her own: “I knew we would work together again, but I wanted it to be equal to equal, as partners. Being able to say to Laure, she remembers with a burst of laughter: “You speak to me better!” »
Laure Heinich, daughter of a teacher, granite, she, dreaming of brandishing the Roland-Garros cup. She does law by default, gets caught up in the game on the way, finds herself sharing files with Gisèle Halimi. She assumes the reservations she has kept with regard to the deceased lawyer: “She was a very tough woman with her collaborators, very selfish. Remembering him takes nothing away from my immense admiration for his courage and militant commitment. She sacrificed her life in defense. » Judicial columnist for » L’Obs « , Laure Heinich published in 2014 a novel and a collection of various cases, » Wear their voice » (ed. Fayard), for which the writer Annie Ernaux sent her a word of congratulations . She always has it in front of her, next to her computer. His office is the most personal room. Like Laure, Dorothée has her office. There, between these solid and reassuring walls, the provincial who still doubts whether she belongs in the heart of this bourgeois district of the capital, the granddaughter of illiterate Sicilians who dreamed of living in Paris « like Vic in La Boum “”, feels “protected”.
They have a collaborator, the only man on the floor. Because, six years after the beginnings of the firm, which they opened in 2016, it is voluntarily that they do not plan to associate a lawyer with it: their complicity, strong of twenty years of shared life, comes from a clever balance between professional and personal that no one wants to take the risk of threatening. When they have « things to say to each other », they find themselves in the kitchen, the nerve center of the gynaeceum. There, they discuss a file as well as an affair of the heart or a sex story. Between a natural yoghurt and a slice of ham, they reinvent the world, they who know its darkness and the flashes of light.
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