L’evoluzione delle forme aggregative per l’esercizio delle professioni intellettuali: dallo studio associato alla società tra professionisti

The exercise of professional activities in partnership forms represents, with no doubts, one of the arguments that, more than others, have enlivened the debate concerning the regulated professions over the decades. These aggregative phenomena have experienced a long period of substantial aversion on the part of the Italian Legislator, because of the strong pressure from the more "orthodox" components of the professional associations; and only thanks to the interpretation given by doctrine and jurisprudence a window has been opened for the progressive acceptance of the cases arosed from the practice. In fact, since 1815, due to the prohibition of establishing partnerships among professionals, a lot of different cases have emerged in practice characterized by the fact that, while skirting the hypothesis of partnerships, were quite distinct from them. Despite the attempts represented by the two Bersani laws in 1997 and 2006, the final admission in Italian legislation for these legal paradigms was introduced only in 2011. Today more than ever, partnerships among professionals constitute an important opportunity for professionals by allowing them to operate, in a more efficient and competitive way, in a market that, increasingly contaminated by heterogeneous services and performance, requires a rethinking of the role of the professional who cannot remain anchored to the classic figure of the individual operating within their offices, due also to the EU competition. This paper will, therefore, provide an analysis of the slow evolution that led to the discipline of partnerships among professionals enacted between 2011 and 2013, starting from the Law n. 1815/1939 which forbade their establishment up to the ministerial regulation that implemented the provisions of Law n. 183 of 2011.