Jerome "Jerry" Roth, a San Francisco-based litigation partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson, has been elected president of the International Association of Lawyers (UIA), which is based in Paris.

Roth will begin his one-year presidency on Saturday. He is only the fifth U.S. lawyer to be elected as the UIA's president and the first from California in the organisation's 92-year history.

"I have always been interested in foreign cultures, foreign languages. I love everything that is international," said Roth, who specialises in business and international litigation and arbitration, as well as white-collar criminal defense and investigations.