Law360 (August 25, 2020, 4:54 PM EDT) -- The lead-up to Avantor's $4.4 billion initial public offering last year forced the health care materials company's general counsel, Justin Miller, to use skills he acquired over his years as a trial lawyer and an in-house attorney for E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.

Avantor had originally been planning for an IPO in 2017, but it merged that year with laboratory products company VWR International. Miller joined the company just after the November 2017 merger, and the combined enterprise set a target IPO date for late 2020 or early 2021. But the company, with Miller on board, was able to integrate more quickly than it expected and hit the mark in 2019.

To get it done, Miller drew upon his talent for telling a compelling story with a strong command of the facts, a skill he honed during his early career in criminal defense. He had to use the understanding of science and technology that he developed in-house at DuPont; perform due diligence; persuade and educate bankers, investors and regulators; and balance the interests of bankers who would sell the stocks and current and future shareholders.

"All those things are incredibly interesting, but the confluence of all the different workstreams you have to put together and choreograph in half the planned time?" he said. "Had I had much hair going into the process, I probably wouldn't have much now."

The massive IPO, the second-largest of 2019 after Uber, was one of many achievements that landed Miller among 13 corporate counsel named Legends in Law by the Burton Awards this year.

Miller was slated to be honored in person at the Burton Awards' June ceremony at the Library of Congress, but the event was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The next ceremony is scheduled for June 14, 2021. Law360 is a sponsor of the Burton Awards.

Tom Sager, a Ballard Spahr LLP partner who nominated Miller for the honor, described Miller as talented and creative. He said Miller took on tough litigation for DuPont.

"He led a litigation effort that created immense value for DuPont while at the same time saved the company huge costs and reputational damage," Sager said. "His subsequent work as general counsel for Avantor merely mirrors his legal track record and bottom-line contributions."

Miller's work, of course, didn't end with Avantor's IPO, which included $3.3 billion of common shares and $1.1 billion of mandatory convertible shares. He continues to oversee the company's legal affairs as it does business in about 180 countries, each with its own regulations governing health care materials and supplies.

Miller received his law degree from George Mason University School of Law in 1991 and dreamed of being the next big trial lawyer. He started at a small criminal defense firm and won his first trial at age 26. He once obtained a not guilty verdict for a client in a murder trial. He also tasted bitter defeat in a D.C. federal court case in which a client was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

He eventually joined DuPont and became the company's chief litigation counsel before leaving in December 2015 for Ballard Spahr. He joined Avantor two years later.

Miller reflected on the greatest revelation from his in-house experiences: Risk and opportunity live in the same place, he said. Lawyers are trained from the start to avoid risk and heap it onto others. That's not always the best choice, he said.

"As you grow up a little bit more inside a company, and maybe I was just slow to mature, but you start to realize that when risk and opportunity live in the same place, it's not always a great choice to push the risk to somebody else," he said. "Maybe you just need to be more adept than everyone else at navigating it."

--Editing by Kelly Duncan and Jill Coffey.

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