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. Louis is passionate about helping businesses and ventures with compelling technologies reach their growth objectives, and he specializes in assisting companies cross borders, where an appreciation of different cultures and regulations is essential.
Louis Lehot’s corporate, securities, and M&A law practice focuses on advising public companies as well as emerging private companies and their venture capital and private equity investors, from company formation to liquidity. He regularly acts as company-side counsel in mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, spin-offs, strategic investments, and joint ventures.
Clients turn to Louis for his domain experience in public offerings and private placements of equity, equity-linked, and debt securities, and in mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, spin-offs, strategic investments, and joint ventures, as well as corporate governance and securities law compliance matters. 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.
==Early life and education==
Louis Lehot was born in Oakland, California. He completed his high school education at Bishop O’Dowd High School and went on to earn an international law degree at Georgetown University. Louis completed his Juris Doctor for Law from Boston College Law School. He is fluent in French and is a proud husband and father to two children.
==Career==
Prior to locating in Silicon Valley, Louis Lehot practiced in New York, London, and Paris. In 2000, he joined Shearman & Sterling in London as a cross-border corporate finance lawyer.
He continued his journey as a corporate lawyer in 2005 at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, in Palo Alto. Over the next 15 years, Louis worked as a partner at several Silicon Valley firms, including Sheppard Mullin, Cooley LLP, DLA Piper, and L2 Counsel P.C.. 
In 2021, Louis joined Foley and Lardner LLP as M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital Law Partner.
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 guides entrepreneurs and their management teams, investors, and financial advisers 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, and later prepare for IPOs, de-SPAC, and M&A transactions, and navigate the exit.
Louis draws on more than 20 years of global experience and leverages the latest legal technology 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, and in mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, spin-offs, strategic investments, and joint ventures, as well as corporate governance and securities 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 start-ups.
==Awards and recognitions==
* Named Law360's 2023 Mergers and Acquisitions Editorial Advisory Board.
* Recognized, Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in the practice area of Venture Capital (2021-2023). 
* Selected as an Acritas Star, Acritas (2021). 
* Recognized, The Legal 500 US in the fields of mergers & acquisitions/corporate and commercial.
* Selected for inclusion to Super Lawyer (M&A, 2021-2023) by Super Lawyers Magazine.
* 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).
* Identified as a California leader in Capital Markets: Debt & Equity, by Chambers USA (2012-2015).
* Recognized as a “Power Player” by Always On (2012).
==In the media==
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==References==
==External links==
* Personal Website
* Company website
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* Louis Lehot on YouTube
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Category:American businesspeople
Category:American entrepreneurs
Category:American business executives
Category:American authors
Category:American educators
Category:Boston College Law School alumni