1. Home
  2. Events
  3. Paris Team Hosts Workshops to Promote Diversity in French Legal Sector

Paris Team Hosts Workshops to Promote Diversity in French Legal Sector

Les Entretiens de l’Excellence

Sponsored Event | November.30.2018 | 1:30pm - 7:00pm (Central European Standard Time)

Orrick Rambaud Martel

Our Paris office has once again partnered with Les Entretiens de l’Excellence to introduce diverse French law students to a wide range of career paths in the legal industry.

Les Entretiens de l’Excellence promotes access to higher education and equal opportunity among young students from diverse ethnic, socio-economic and geographic backgrounds.

During this year’s event, 34 law professionals – including lawyers, magistrates, in-house lawyers and general counsels, contract managers, compliance officers and data protection officers – took part in an afternoon of small-group workshops, offering career insights and feedback to more than 100 students from 9 law schools. Students also had the opportunity to apply for internships in different legal fields.

Hear directly from the participants:

 

This is our second year hosting the event, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Les Entretiens de l’Excellence. Thanks to our team of organizers: Benjamin Cichostepski and Yann Schneller, who is an active member of the organization, with support from Janina Dahmouh, Marie-Elise Douge and Adélaïde Jomier.

9554_740x360

Practice:

  • Technology & Innovation Sector
  • 科技企業業務
  • 併購

Benjamin Cichostepski-Lesage Partner

Paris; Paris Tech Studio

Benjamin Cichostepski-Lesage leads Orrick’s Technology Companies Group in France from the Paris Tech Studio.

Ben is the founding partner of Orrick's French Tech Companies Group. For more than 15 years, he has been advising high-potential innovative companies as well as Venture and Tech Growth investors on all their corporate private equity and M&A transactions in France and worldwide.

As such, he is involved in every stage of their development, from incubation and fundraising to external growth and industrial exits as well as public offerings (IPO, secondary).

Ben has notably a recognized experience in assisting French companies seeking to establish themselves in the United States. He assists French start-ups throughout their growth overseas as well as a clientele of American investors or buyers.

From his first venture deal in 2006, where he represented Lightspeed Venture Partners in Wikio’s Series A, which became Teads, a company that he then accompanied for 11 years until its sale to Altice, Ben has led more than 260 Corporate Tech transactions and has been involved in the main exit transactions in recent years, particularly Franco-American ones (Neolane/Adobe, La Fourchette/TripAdvisor, Stupeflix/GoPro, eNovance/Red Hat, Regaind, Zenly/Snap, Teads/Altice, Getaround/Drivy, Glose/Medium, Sqreen/Datadog, Lalilo/Renaissance Learning, Tempow/Google, Context/Integral Ad Science, Monk/ACV Auctions, Cajoo/Flink).

Ben's leadership has contributed to placing the firm's Tech practice in the Top 3 of most active law firms in France (Capital Finance’s ranking of “the most active law firms in French venture capital" in 2019, 2020 and 2021 – Capital Finance is the weekly business newsletter of Les Echos, the French equivalent of FT and WSJ –, PitchBook's 2023 ranking).

Recognized as a key lawyer in the market in Venture and Tech Growth, Ben is ranked as the most active tech lawyer in France in 2019 by transaction volume in CFNews’ ranking (February 2020 – CFNews is the French equivalent of PitchBook and focuses on private equity data). He is also ranked by Chambers Europe and The Legal 500 EMEA in Private Equity - Venture Capital/Growth Capital since 2020. He was voted "Lawyer of the Year" in the 2023 edition of Best Lawyers France in the Venture Capital category.

Ben is the founder of Orrick Paris Tech Studio, a one of a kind office and working space created in June 2022 and located in the heart of the Paris Tech scene, which is the headquarters of Orrick's French Tech practice.

345633_740x360

Practice:

  • Energy & Infrastructure Sector
  • 能源
  • 基礎設施
  • Africa

Janina Dahmouh Senior Associate

Paris

Janina Dahmouh is a public law lawyer in the Energy and Infrastructures unit of Orrick Paris office.

Janina mainly intervenes in all regulated sectors (transportation, telecommunications, health ...) with a focus on regulatory energy related issues. She has a deep knowledge of the specificities of the renewable sector (such as solar, wind (offshore and onshore), biogas and geothermal energy). She works for public entities as well as private entities, including investors in the context of M&A operations both in the infrastructure and energy sectors.

Before joining Orrick in 2016, Janina completed several internships with French and other major international law firms and also with an independent administrative authority in charge of telecommunications.