[1] Born in Colombo to a family of lawyers, of Dutch and Malay ancestry,[2] De Saram was educated at the Royal College, Colombo, from where he entered the newly established Law Faculty of the University of Ceylon in 1949 and graduated with an LLB shortly he took oaths as an advocate of the Supreme Court of Ceylon.
Later he attended Yale Law School as a Smith-mundt Scholar and was admitted as a barrister in the Inner Temple.
[3][4] He started his career as an assistant lecturer in the law faculty, University of Ceylon in 1952.
He served as legal consultant of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to Indian Ocean Marine Affairs Cooperation meetings from 1989 to 1991.
In 1997, he was a United Nations recommended legal consultant to Hangzhou International Centre on Small Hydro Power, in China.