Private banks are the largest standing legal employers. The Pictet Group's In Brief states that the group was founded in 1805, is headquartered in Geneva, employs more than 5,400 people, and has 31 offices in 20 countries, with the partnership figures given as at 30 June 2025. The half-year financial report as at that same date counts 5,491 full-time employees and CHF 711 billion of assets under management or custody. Lombard Odier's media release of 3 September 2025 records a new headquarters in Bellevue, bringing together more than 2,000 employees who had been spread across six Geneva sites. Those figures are the banks, not the legal department. The desk is small, the book is FINMA-supervised, and the employment contract is in French.
Commodity trading moved on 2 October 2026. Gunvor's own statement that day said the employee partnership had renamed the company Centalion, intended to move the corporate headquarters from Cyprus to Singapore, and would keep its main trading offices in Geneva and in Houston, in addition to Singapore. Allnews, reporting the same announcement, put the group at more than 2,000 employees worldwide. Geneva stays a principal trading office. A head of legal there covers sanctions, financing, and charter disputes. The search is not a Cyprus company-secretary hire, and the Geneva office has not closed.
Watch and jewellery groups with a Geneva seat, Rolex and Richemont among them, hire a thinner desk: commercial contracts, distribution, and intellectual property. The international organisations are not a company search. The United Nations Office at Geneva, the WTO, WHO, WIPO and the ICRC employ lawyers on international-organisation terms. Those counsel already live in the canton, and a company general counsel meets them as counterparties. Their contract, pay, and notice are not the Code of Obligations.
Two associations describe lawyers, and neither is an in-house census. The Ordre des avocats de Genève, in its 2025 activity report, counted 2,289 active members across 478 firms, on a mean annual membership of 2,222, with rotation of about 11.1 percent. ODAGE is a voluntary association. It is not the Commission du barreau, which keeps the cantonal roll, and its members are in private practice. The Association of Swiss In-House Counsel (VSUJ / SICA), founded in 1982 and domiciled in Zurich, states that it has more than 800 members working in more than 300 companies. Individual dues are CHF 80 a year, CHF 320 for a company with up to five lawyers, and CHF 640 above five. The kink shows that many Swiss desks are small. It is not a Geneva headcount.
Disputes are why the trading and banking desks hire. They are not a headcount of counsel in the city. The Swiss Arbitration Centre, in the annual report published on 24 February 2026, registered 125 new cases in 2025, up 25 percent on 2024, 77 percent of them international. Those 125 cases are the Centre's caseload, not hearings seated in Geneva. The Supplemental Swiss Rules for Trust, Estate and Foundation Disputes have applied since 1 July 2025. On ICC seats, ICC Switzerland's reading of the 2025 statistics records 881 new cases, with Geneva the place of arbitration in 27 and Zurich in 24.