Jean-Louis Joris, LLM '75
In today’s global law environment, it’s hard to recall a time when few European lawyers studied abroad and few American law firms practiced across borders. Jean-Louis Joris remembers it well. Having joined Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in 1975, he has been part of a pioneering
age of internationalization at his firm and in legal practice worldwide.
Joris, of Brussels, credits the Michigan LLM as his passport to an extraordinary career—“an adventure,” he says. In appreciation, he has made a gift of $250,000 for international student support, matched by $125,000 from President Mary Sue Coleman’s Challenge for the Student
Global Experience.
Joris came to the United States to study amid the emerging trend at that time for American law firms to be present in Europe (often through an office in Brussels), in order to meet the needs of American multinational corporations there more successfully than local lawyers. As the Brussels bar sought to protect its interests, Joris thought, “Why don’t we go study in the U.S. to learn what those guys know that we don’t?”
He did just that, via an exchange fellowship between Michigan Law and the Flemish University of Brussels, his European alma mater. He arrived in Ann Arbor in August 1974. Joris found the Socratic method refreshing; he enjoyed the luxury of choosing six elective classes; he was impressed by the teaching of J.J. White, ‘62.
“But the most important thing was being in an international atmosphere,” he says. “That has led me to advocate in my own firm for the quasirequirement that all European associates must get an LLM in the United States.” In doing so, Joris believes, the associates get the benefit of analytical legal training plus exposure to American culture, the better to serve American and international clients.
Joris’s 37-year relationship with Cleary began with the simple desire for a call-back interview to spend a weekend in New York. Offered a job as an associate, he worked first in New York, then in Brussels, where he became a partner in 1983. He spent most of his career in mergers and acquisitions, always in cross-border transactions.
Married to a psychologist and the father of three grown children, all professionals, Joris says his gift is also inspired by the desire to thank the school that gave him a fellowship and the fact that American universities depend on the generosity of their alumni to stay strong.
“In continental Europe, higher education is basically free,” he says, “whereas in America, I don’t have to tell you that it’s getting to what I believe are absurd numbers. Since I’ve benefited enormously from the American educational system, I wanted to give something back.”