Former Paris Bar Chairman Jean-Marie Burguburu elected UIA President in Dresden

During the closing ceremony of the annual UIA Congress on 3 November 2012 in Dresden, Germany, Mr Jean-Marie Burguburu, a former Chairman of the Paris Bar, took over the presidency of the association from Driss Chater, the outgoing President. Mr Burguburu is the first former Chairman of the Paris Bar in over 40 years to have been elected President of the most longstanding international lawyers' organisation.

Jean-Marie Burguburu has been a member of the Paris Bar since 1966. He was the Chairman of the Paris Bar from 2004 to 2005 and currently holds the position of International Counsel at the Paris offices of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. Mr Burguburu specialises in civil and criminal litigation in the field of business law. He spent over 40 years at Gide Loyrette Nouel, an international law firm founded in France, where he was a partner from 1976 to 2010.

Jean-Marie Burguburu has been a member of the Paris Bar Council since 1991. He is a former member of the French delegation to the CCBE (Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe) and has been actively involved in the institutional bodies of the legal profession for many years, particularly at international level. Mr Burguburu is also a member of the Conseil National des Barreaux (French Law Society) and is the vice president of its international commission. For many years he was active in the field of intellectual property (as a member of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property) and also served on the Conseil Supérieur de la Propriété Industrielle (French Industrial Property Advisory Board) from 1996 to 2010.

Mr Burguburu showed his commitment to the UIA by chairing the French National Committee between 2006 and 2008. In 2008, Mr Burguburu became President of the International Bar Leaders Senate, a UIA consultative body and discussion forum for bar association chairs and presidents of professional lawyers' organisations at local, national and international levels. In 2010, he was elected First Vice President of the UIA at the Istanbul Congress and called on to hold this position for one year following the Dresden Congress.

Jean-Marie Burguburu holds an LLM from the University of Paris (1966) and two higher degrees in civil law (1967) and criminal law (1968). For many years, Mr Burguburu was a lecturer at Paris and Bordeaux Universities and in several law schools, as well as at the Industrial Property Centre at the University of Alicante (Spain). He studied at the French Institute for Higher National Defence Studies in 1982 and at the French Institute for Higher National Security Studies in 1990.