Gunnar Carler was born in 1928. His documented career connected two legal systems, the Swedish and the French, with professional work in Stockholm and Paris.
He spoke English, French and Swedish, languages that suited a practice serving foreign businesses and diplomatic missions in Sweden and cross-border commercial matters between Scandinavia and France.
Carler studied law at Stockholm University, which at that time was known as Stockholm University College (Stockholms högskola). The college was founded in 1878 as a radical alternative to the traditional universities in Uppsala and Lund, and it began without examinations or diplomas. It gained the right to award degrees in 1904, and the city of Stockholm had pressed for law education to address a shortage of lawyers in the capital. The institution received full university status only in 1960.
Carler's documented law degree, the Bachelor of Laws or Candidate of Law, was completed in 1954. His French qualifications followed later. He was admitted as a Conseil juridique in 1971, a regulated French legal-advisory status, and became an Avocat à la Cour de Paris in 1992, a designation for lawyers admitted to practise before the Paris courts of appeal.
Carler's documented professional life began with a period at the District Court from 1954 to 1956. Swedish district courts are first-instance courts where most civil and criminal cases are initially heard, so this stage gave him early exposure to the judicial process before he moved into private practice. From 1956 to 1960 he worked in private legal practice.
In 1960 Carler founded Advokatfirman Carler in Stockholm, and he became a partner in the firm. The firm described its origins as an established practice with broad competence in Swedish and international commercial law, with offices in Stockholm and Paris. His work at the firm focused on arbitration and international contracts. A French branch, Carler France, was set up in Paris in 1973 as the first legal firm of Swedish origin to establish itself in France, and it later became independent while keeping close ties with the Swedish firm.
Carler also held board positions in Sweden. He served as chairman or member of the boards of Swedish subsidiaries of foreign companies, including Reynolds, Sharp Corporation, Marubeni Corporation, Rhône-Poulenc, L'Oréal, Legrand, Essilor and Thomson. These firms ranged from American industrial groups to Japanese trading and electronics companies and French chemical, cosmetics, electrical and optical enterprises, which reflected the cross-border character of his practice. Sharp was a Japanese electronics manufacturer founded in 1912, Marubeni is a Japanese trading house with origins in Osaka in the nineteenth century, Rhône-Poulenc was a major French chemical and pharmaceutical group, and L'Oréal is a French cosmetics company founded in 1909.
He served as legal counsel to the French, Belgian and Italian embassies in Stockholm. An embassy is a state's diplomatic mission in another country, and legal counsel to such missions typically handled questions of local law and contractual matters. Carler was also appointed chairman of an arbitral tribunal by the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. The International Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1919, promotes international trade and offers arbitration for commercial disputes between parties in different countries.
Carler was a member of the Swedish Bar Association, the national professional body for lawyers practising in Sweden, and of the Barreau de Paris, the bar of lawyers practising in Paris.
He also served on the boards of the French Chamber of Commerce and the Franco-Finnish Chamber of Commerce. Chambers of commerce bring together businesses and promote trade between their countries, and the Franco-Finnish chamber focused on commercial relations between France and Finland.
