When Inès Lassalle sits across from a founder preparing to enter the American market, she brings experience advising on the legal terrain on both sides of the Atlantic.
Dual-qualified and admitted to practice in California and France, Lassalle focuses her legal practice on matters arising under U.S. and French law. Her clients, founders, executives, athletes, and investors operate across borders where a misstep in one jurisdiction can unravel carefully structured deals in another. For them, Lassalle functions as a legal architect, advising on legal structuring and compliance frameworks that support cross-border operations.
Her client base covers artificial intelligence, health tech, hospitality, real estate, and venture-backed enterprises. Each sector brings its own regulatory complexity, and Lassalle’s work involves advising clients in ways that account for the distinct legal frameworks of the United States and France. Lassalle advises foreign businesses entering or scaling in the U.S. market on operational compliance frameworks and entity structuring across multiple jurisdictions. This work places her practice at the intersection of cross-border business operations and regulatory compliance.
A Foundation Built Across Continents
Lassalle’s academic record reflects the same international orientation as her practice. She earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne and completed business and finance studies at UCLA. She trained in mergers and acquisitions at the École de Formation Professionnelle des Barreaux de la Cour d’appel de Paris (EFB) and holds certificates in contract law from Harvard University and in financial markets from Yale University. Together, these credentials reflect training in legal and financial aspects of cross-border business matters, which is particularly useful when advising clients in high-stakes or emerging sectors.
Before establishing her own practice, Lassalle worked as a corporate lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in Paris and as a corporate M&A lawyer at Thales, one of France’s largest defense and technology conglomerates, where she gained direct exposure to the mechanics of large-scale cross-border transactions. She also developed international tax experience at EY. Earlier still, her contributions to the Clinique Juridique de Paris and Sorbonne Junior Conseil, where she supported business law work as a student practitioner, provided her with early experience in regulatory and business law.
These experiences helped shape Lassalle’s cross-border practice, which focuses on advising clients on legal issues arising from business operations across multiple jurisdictions.
Cross-Border Structuring And Compliance
Lassalle’s dual qualification in California and France allows her to advise businesses operating across legal systems. For companies navigating the regulatory distance between the E.U. and U.S. markets, the ability to work with a single practitioner who holds legal standing in both systems can simplify issues relating to entity structuring, compliance, and market entry. This consolidation of expertise is particularly relevant for businesses in sectors where regulatory environments shift quickly, and jurisdictional misalignment carries financial and operational risk.
The range of Lassalle’s client base, covering venture-backed startups, athletes with international business interests, and established enterprises across multiple continents, reflects a practice focused on managing multi-jurisdictional legal requirements. Her work in designing operational compliance structures and advising on entity formation across jurisdictions illustrates an advisory practice centered on ongoing cross-border legal strategy rather than isolated transactions.
Professional Activities And Legal Training
Lassalle’s professional reach extends into legal education. In 2025, Lassalle received a Global Recognition Award in law for her work in cross-border legal structuring and her involvement in legal training initiatives. Lassalle has served as a judge in international legal competitions, including the American Moot Court Association (AMCA) and National Moot Court Competition (NMCC). She has also participated as an arbitrator in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot, an international competition focused on commercial law and arbitration. In these roles, she has evaluated written and oral advocacy and provided feedback on legal reasoning.
As cross-border business activity continues to expand, legal structuring and regulatory alignment remain central considerations for companies operating across jurisdictions. Lassalle’s practice focuses on addressing these issues through advisory work on entity structuring, compliance, and cross-border legal strategy in the U.S. and French markets.
