Louis Lehot: A Silicon Valley Law Career, From First Deal to Foley & Lardner

By Louis Lehot, Partner, Foley & Lardner LLP

Louis Lehot at Foley & Lardner LLP

Louis Lehot

I am Louis Lehot, a corporate partner at Foley & Lardner LLP in Silicon Valley. For more than 25 years I have advised founders, venture capital investors, and boards on mergers and acquisitions, venture financing, IPOs, and corporate governance. Chambers USA has ranked my work in venture capital every year since 2021. This page tells the story behind that practice: where it started, the firms that shaped it, and what a long career in Silicon Valley law taught me about advising the people who build companies.

My first job in this profession was at Shearman & Sterling in 1993, as a clerk, while I was still an undergraduate at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. My major was International Relations, Law & Organization, and the clerk job showed me what the law part looked like in practice. I stayed on as a paralegal after graduation, returned as a summer associate during law school, and became a lawyer at the firm in 2000. I then spent five years in Europe, advising non-U.S. multinationals on access to the U.S. capital markets, before returning home to Silicon Valley in 2005. I have now spent 33 years around this work, and more than 25 of them as a lawyer.

The timing of that start mattered. I became a lawyer the year the dot-com bubble burst. In my first months of practice, deals that had looked certain came undone, and I watched a generation of assumptions fall apart around me. It was an early and useful lesson. A lawyer earns their keep in difficult markets, when clients need steady counsel and a clear read on their options, not in the easy ones when capital is plentiful and everything closes.

From 2005 to 2009, I practiced at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in Palo Alto, during the private equity expansion that followed. It was demanding, high-quality work: cross-border transactions and complex M&A for sophisticated clients. I learned a great deal and did some of the best work of my early career there.

The financial crisis in 2008 brought a turning point. I was not elected to the partnership on the timeline I had hoped for. In a large firm, that kind of setback prompts real reflection. I took it as a signal to chart my own course, and I moved on. It remains one of the most instructive moments of my career, because it taught me that a setback is information about fit and timing, not a measure of worth. I give founders the same counsel today when a financing falls through or a board says not yet.

In 2009 I joined Sheppard Mullin and focused on the fundamentals: understanding each client’s business and being genuinely useful to the person in front of me. That discipline has stayed with me. From 2013 I practiced at Cooley, one of Silicon Valley’s leading technology firms, and from 2015 to 2019 at DLA Piper, where I built a global practice serving clients across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Those years added the international dimension that still defines my work: cross-border M&A, foreign investors in Silicon Valley companies, and American founders expanding abroad.

After two decades inside Big Law platforms, I wanted to know whether the practice I had built could stand entirely on its own. So in 2019 I founded a boutique firm, L2 Counsel, with no large platform behind it and no inherited clients, just the relationships I had earned and the belief that my work delivered real value. The answer came quickly. Clients stayed, new ones arrived, and the work was as sophisticated as anything I had done at the global firms.

Running my own firm also changed how I practice. When every decision is yours, you learn precisely what clients value and what they merely tolerate. I came out of those years more entrepreneurial, more direct, and more focused on what founders actually need from their lawyer. That experience is why founders often tell me I think more like an owner than an advisor. I have been one.

My practice covers the full life of a technology company. For founders, that means formation, seed and venture capital financings, and the governance decisions that quietly determine how much control they keep. For growth companies, it means M&A on either side of the table, IPO preparation, and de-SPAC transactions. For investors and boards, it means deal structuring, fiduciary questions, and the hard judgment calls that do not fit neatly in a term sheet.

The value of a long career is perspective. I have advised clients through the dot-com correction and the financial crisis. I have practiced in global firms and run my own. When a transaction hits turbulence in diligence, or a board faces a hard decision, or negotiations grow tense, I have seen versions of it before. That experience lets me keep clients focused on what matters and steady in their judgment.

When I joined Foley & Lardner as a partner in 2021, the fit made sense. Foley pairs the resources and reach of a national firm with the room to practice the way I had come to practice. The approach I describe as garage to global, guiding companies from an early idea through financing, growth, and exit, now sits on a platform equipped to handle transactions of any size and complexity.

The recognition that followed reflects continuity of work, not a single deal or a single year. Chambers USA has ranked me in Venture Capital (California) each year from 2021 through 2026, every year I have been at the firm, and in Startups & Emerging Companies (USA – Nationwide) in 2025 and 2026. JD Supra readers have named me a Top Author in M&A three years running, 2024 through 2026. I have served on the NACD Northern California Leadership Advisory Council since 2024, and I am a two-time faculty member at Stanford Directors’ College, where I taught corporate governance.

I write constantly, because writing forces precision. I have published more than 50 articles on M&A, venture capital, IPOs, and startup law in the National Law Review, Law.com, The Legal Intelligencer, Foley Ignite, and the CFA Institute Enterprising Investor. Each week I publish the Silicon Valley Docket, a short read on the deals and legal developments that matter, alongside a monthly newsletter on business and legal trends. Founders and investors read them to stay current, and I read the market more clearly for having to explain it every week.

Founders and management teams have plenty of options in choosing counsel. What I offer is the judgment of a lawyer who has practiced through several cycles, built practices in every setting from global platform to solo boutique, and remains as engaged in the work as ever. That is what I bring to my clients at Foley & Lardner, and it is why the next chapter looks even better than the last.

Louis Lehot is a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. He advises founders, venture capital investors, and boards on M&A, public offerings, venture financing, and corporate governance. Chambers USA has ranked him in Venture Capital (California) every year from 2021 through 2026 and in Startups & Emerging Companies (USA - Nationwide) in 2025 and 2026. He serves on the NACD Northern California Leadership Advisory Council and is a two-time faculty member at Stanford Directors' College. He is a graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and Boston College Law School. He grew up in Oakland, California, and is fluent in French. His weekly and monthly newsletters are at louislehotattorney.substack.com.

Awards & Recognition

Chambers USA has ranked him in Venture Capital (California) every year from 2021 through 2026 and in Startups & Emerging Companies (USA – Nationwide) in 2025 and 2026. He is also recognized by Super Lawyers as a top M&A attorney in Northern California (2021–2026) and was named a Rising Star (2011–2012). In addition, he holds a top ranking of 10 by Justia and has been selected for JD Supra’s Readers’ Choice Awards (2024–2026).

In addition to his legal practice, he serves on the Leadership Advisory Council of the Northern California chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors and the Business Leadership Council at Boston College Law School.