Louis Lehot

Louis Lehot is a partner and business lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP, based in the firm’s Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Los Angeles offices, where he is a member of the M&A and Transactions Practices, Private Equity & Venture Capital, and the Technology, Health Care, and Energy Industry Teams. He is passionate about helping businesses and ventures with compelling technologies reach their growth objectives. Specifically, helping companies cross borders, where an appreciation of different cultures and backgrounds is key.
Louis Lehot’s corporate, securities, and M&A law practice focuses on advising public and emerging private companies and their venture capital and private equity investors from formation to liquidity. He regularly acts as company-side counsel in mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, spin-offs, strategic investments, and joint ventures.
His domain experience in public offerings and private placements of equity, equity-linked, and debt securities, mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, spinoffs, strategic investments, and joint ventures, as well as corporate governance and securities law compliance matters, serves his clients well. He regularly represents US and non-US registrants before the SEC, FINRA, NYSE and NASDAQ.
Prior to joining Foley, Louis was the founder of L2 Counsel, a Silicon Valley boutique law firm.
==Personal life==
Lehot was born in Oakland, California. He completed his high school education at Bishop O’Dowd High School and went on to take an international law degree at Georgetown University. He completed his Juris Doctor for Law from Boston College Law School. Louis Lehot is fluent in French, with experience serving diverse clients in Paris.
==Career==
Lehot began his career in New York and then moved to Europe, spending five years advising non-U.S. multinationals on how to access the U.S. capital markets. In 2000, Lehot started working at Sherman & Sterling in London as a Cross-Border finance lawyer. He continued his journey as a corporate lawyer in 2005 at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP, back home in Palo Alto.
In 2009, he joined Sheppard Mullin as a Law Partner and then moved on to Cooley as a partner. His leadership journey continued as a Partner at DLA Piper, Silicon Valley, before becoming a Corporate, M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital Law Partner Foley and Lardner in 2021.
On a very short list of leading corporate lawyers in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, Louis Lehot has handled some of the highest profile matters in the tech, health care, and clean energy spaces. He is currently a partner in Foley and Larder LLP’s Private Equity & Venture Capital, M&A, and Transactions Practices, as well as the Technology, Health Care, Life Sciences, and Energy Industry Teams, he advises entrepreneurs and their management teams, investors, and financial advisors at all stages of growth.
Louis is skilled at taking clients from “garage to global,” helping them achieve hyper-growth, go public, and successfully obtain optimal liquidity events. He guides emerging private companies as they secure venture capital financing, prepare for IPO, de-SPAC, or an M&A transaction, and navigate the exit.
Louis draws on more than 20 years of global experience and leverages the latest legal technology tools to drive strategies and solutions that make sense. Clients routinely turn to Louis for his domain experience in public offerings and private placements of equity, equity-linked, and debt securities, mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, spinoffs, strategic investments, and joint ventures, as well as corporate governance and securities law compliance matters. Additionally, Louis regularly represents U.S. and non-U.S. registrants before the SEC, FINRA, NYSE, and NASDAQ. His diverse portfolio includes emerging growth companies, public companies, and venture-backed startups.
==Awards and recognitions==
* Lehot was named as Law360's 2023 Mergers and Acquisitions Editorial Advisory Board
* He was recognized as the Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in the practice area of Venture Capital (2021-2023) 
* He was selected as an Acritas Star™, Acritas (2021) 
* Recognized by The Legal 500 US in the fields of mergers & acquisitions/corporate and commercial
* He was included as a Super Lawyer (M&A, 2021-2023) by Super Lawyers Magazine 
* He was named an advisory board member by the Silicon Valley Directors’ Exchange (SVDX) in partnership with Stanford Law School’s Rock Center for corporate governance (2016-2019)
* He was identified as a California leader in Capital Markets: Debt & Equity by Chambers USA (2012 – 2015)
* He was recognized as a “Power Player” by Always On (2012)
==External links==
* Personal Website
* Company website
* Facebook
* Instagram
* Louis Lehot on YouTube
* Twitter
* LinkedIn
==References==
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