Jan Lerch was born in 1965 in Sušice (Western Bohemia), where he attended primary school and grammar school; and he lived there until he was 18 years old. Completing a grammar school, he went to study at the military university in Vyškov (South Moravia). After graduating from the university in 1987, he was ordered to Holýšov. He has remained there and lives to this day. In 1989, during the Velvet Revolution, still being a professional soldier, he became involved in Holýšov as a co-founder of the Civic Forum [Civic Forum/Občanské fórum was a political movement that arose two days after the beginning of the “Velvet Revolution” in Prague, it was a spontaneous platform for civic independent activities].

After 1989, he resigned from the army and became a chairman of the municipality in Holýšov. In the course of the election campaign in 1990, he organized an assembly at which the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Jiří Dienstbier spoke as the first candidate representing the West Bohemian Region. After the municipal elections in the autumn of 1990, Jan Lerch was not involved into the Holýšov council and he became the secretary of the Holýšov municipal office. At the same time, he enrolled in law school in 1990.

He left the position of secretary in 1992 and at that time Jiří Dienstbier offered him the position of secretary of his Prague office. Lerch held this position for one year and after that, he worked in a savings bank back in Western Bohemia (Plzeň). After graduating from the Faculty of Law in 1995 he worked for three years as a trainee lawyer. On January 1, 1999, he started his own law firm, in which he still works today. He is married and has three adult children (two sons and a daughter). He likes literature, he reads a lot of biographies and history books, and sports, mainly cycling, tennis, and climbing.