Joel Trotter is the Co-Chair of the National Office, a central resource for clients and Latham lawyers facing complex issues arising under the US securities laws. Joel has successfully guided public companies of all sizes, from Fortune 100 to emerging growth companies, through major transactions, bet-the-company corporate crises, and regulatory matters. He served previously as Global Co-Chair of the Public Company Representation practice and, for 10 years, as Co-Chair of the Corporate Department in Washington, D.C.

Law360 describes Joel as “genuinely brilliant”; “smart, creative, and responsive”; “always available”; “absolutely encyclopedic”; a “master” of “ever-changing federal securities laws”; a problem solver with “deep expertise and excellent judgment” on “the most sophisticated securities problems”; and a strategic advisor whose clients have “deftly avoided legal problems with the SEC because Joel guided them around the land mines.”

Members of Congress credited Joel, in a 2023 hearing, as “a leading member of the IPO Task Force” and “a principal author of the IPO-related provisions” of the JOBS Act of 2012, enacted by a nearly unanimous Congress to reform the IPO process. The Wall Street Journal described Joel’s role in having “advised Congress on the 2012 legislation,” and his views on securities regulation have appeared in Bloomberg, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.

Joel has testified repeatedly before Congress on the federal securities laws, and his publications include contributions to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal against overzealous SEC enforcement, “Nothing to Fear From the SEC?” (October 2015).

Law360 named Joel one of the 10 Most Admired Securities Attorneys from over 1,000 nominations. Who’s Who Legal describes Joel as “adept at handling complex issues for major corporate clients.” The Legal 500 US recommended Joel for Corporate Governance (Tier 1), and Law Business Research named him to the International Who’s Who of Capital Markets Lawyers.

Joel's experience includes:

IPOs

  • Alkami Technology
  • Cbeyond
  • Fantex professional athlete tracking stocks
  • PRA International
  • Reddit
  • Vertex
  • Zeta Global
  • Over 200 IPOs as National Office advisor

M&A

  • ArthroCare in its US$1.7 billion sale
  • Checkpoint Systems in its US$443 million sale
  • FMC Technologies in its US$13 billion merger with Technip
  • Over 100 public company mergers as National Office advisor

Corporate Governance

  • Alkami Technology
  • Ericsson
  • Host Hotels & Resorts
  • Kimco Realty
  • Omnicom
  • Rotech Healthcare
  • The Carlyle Group
  • T-Mobile
  • VEON
  • Vertex
  • Zeta Global

Accounting Restatements

  • Alico
  • ArthroCare
  • Bally Total Fitness
  • Checkpoint Systems
  • ePlus
  • Fannie Mae
  • General Electric
  • Pemco Aviation
  • Smith & Wesson

Regulatory Matters

  • Favorable interpretations of statutory provisions that Joel authored
  • Exemptive relief from SEC financial statement requirements
  • Waivers of SEC auditor independence violations
  • Complete exemptive relief from SEC periodic reporting to defeat a hedge fund’s coercive buyout demand
  • Restatement avoidance and successful defense of immaterial error corrections, including a 9% error in annual net loss
  • Describing Joel, a client’s general counsel said: “You have a few fans in management at [the Big Four auditor] that we assigned to this case and they were quite comfortable agreeing to ‘no material weakness’ (our final hurdle) once they became aware that you and Latham were involved as our outside counsel”

Bar Qualification

  • District of Columbia
  • Virginia

Education

  • JD, University of Virginia School of Law, 1995
    Virginia Law Review
  • BA, University of Virginia, 1992
    Echols Scholar, Raven Society