From Paris to Africa: the French capital is houses base a small club of experienced lawyers who do deals in the most complicated emerging market of all, providing legal services in Africa

Crushed frogs. That's what a witch doctor in Zaire slathered on Jean-Claude Petilon's legs a few hours before he played his first game with a local basketball team. "The frog lotion would make us jump higher," Petilon recalls.

Today, a photograph of the team hangs on the wall of Petilon's Paris office, which is off a courtyard near the Opera Garnier. Petilon, a French national, is the only white man in the picture. When it was taken, in 1974, he was a young lawyer who had been dispatched to Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire--now the Democratic Republic of Congo--to open an office for what was then Duncan Allen & Mitchell. The U.S. firm wanted to set up an all-purpose office to represent American clients investing in Zaire. Playing basketball was a way to build ties to the community and to understand the culture. "It was essential to be seen as not being there to just make money," Petilon says. "For a foreign lawyer to compete with local firms, you had to be involved in local life."

Africa has been at the center of Petilon's practice ever since, even after he returned to France in 1979. Now a partner at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin, Petilon is one of a small community of mostly Paris-based lawyers who have built Africa-focused practices over the past three decades, after the continent first began attracting foreign investment in the 1970s and 1980s. The Africa bar includes lawyers from U.K. firms Clifford Chance, Herbert Smith, Linklaters, Denton Wilde Sapte, and Allen & Overy; U.S. firm White & Case; and French firm Gide Loyrette Nouel, which has established official offices in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. While some firms are deploying more London-, New York-, or Middle East-based lawyers for Africa work, Paris still makes a natural base because of longtime Francophone and civil law connections; it's in the same time zone as much of the continent; and it's also relatively close to Africa, making business travel easier. (A Paris-Tunis flight is just two hours, for instance.) While political instability has made doing work in Africa precarious at times--in some countries, lawyers say, it's smart to have security guards meet their flights--veterans say they've fallen in love with Africa's vibrant cultures and hospitable people.