Cross-border chic

A funny thing happened to Ben Burman on the way to making partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York: He moved to Paris. In 2003, Wachtell sent Burman, then a fourth-year associate, to spend a year at Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier, one of France's top law firms. Burman returned to Wachtell when his secondment was up, but less than a year later, he decided to join Darrois as a full-time associate. He made partner at the firm last year, becoming its only current non-French partner and one of the few at a major French firm.

"There's no one quite like him in the Paris bar, given his credentials and breadth of experience," says Wachtell's David Katz of Burman, now 42.

Burman's route to Wachtell was unconventional. A native of the south of England, he graduated from Oxford University with a degree in English literature in 1989, then spent a year at Yale University studying the subject before going to work for Bain & Co. in London. The consulting firm later sent him to its San Francisco office and, in 1993, to Moscow, where he helped advise the Russian Privatization Center and the State Committee for the Management of State Property on the voucher program by which Russia privatized many of its businesses before working on other projects in Russia.

Burman graduated from Yale Law School with a J.D. in 1999 and spent a year clerking for Judge Pierre Leval of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York before becoming an associate at Wachtell, where he focused on M&A work.

Darrois and Wachtell occupy similar positions in their markets. Both have only their home offices but serve clients that do enough cross-border work that the two firms can send business to each other rather than to a competitor. They began exchanging associates after teaming up in 1999 to represent Pinault-Printemps-Redoute SA, now PPR SA, on its initial investment in Gucci Group NV, says Katz.

Joshua Cammaker and Gregory Ostling, both of whom are now Wachtell partners, preceded Burman, who studied French in high school but says his reading and writing skills far surpassed his speaking ability when he first went to Paris.

Upon arriving at Darrois, Burman was quickly thrown into a high-profile takeover battle. He spent much of his stint in Paris helping Katz and Darrois partner Olivier Diaz represent Sanofi-Synthélabo SA on its €54.5 billion ($75.4 billion) hostile deal for Aventis SA. But even as he returned to New York, he was considering the idea of returning to Darrois.

"He wanted to make a choice of life and come back to Europe. He was very happy in Paris and asked if there was something that could be done," says Diaz. "I said we would be very happy to have him, but we had to discuss it with Wachtell to make sure they had no problem with it." Martin Lipton himself blessed the move, and Burman moved to Paris permanently in 2005.

For Burman, part of the appeal lay in Darrois' modest size -- it has only 19 partners and 24 associates -- and the nature of its practice. "My own practice is probably more varied than it would be in New York in terms of deal size and legal issues raised. In general, lawyers in France, even business lawyers, are under less pressure to specialize than they may be in New York, and personally that is one of the things that made returning to Paris quite attractive."

And, Burman and Katz agree, most French lawyers lead a somewhat more balanced life than their New York counterparts. Burman's Irish wife, Aisling, whom he met in Paris, is a fashion designer for Marc Jacobs, where she directs the women's wear collection. They have a young son and live in the 6th arrondissement, on the Left Bank of the Seine.

Burman focuses on cross-border deals at Darrois. In 2007 he worked closely with Alain Maillot, one of the name partners at Darrois, advising Stefano Pessina on his investment alongside Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in their joint buyout of Alliance Boots plc, which at £12 billion (nearly $24 billion at the time) was Europe's largest public-to-private transaction.

Now in his second year as a Darrois partner, Burman says his relocating days are over. "I'm really proud to work at the firm, which I love, and Paris is a great place for my wife, given her career," he says. "And there's no reason you can't do international M&A out of Paris as easily as out of any other European capital." Not to mention New York.