Georgetown Law

John F. Olson joined the faculty as a Distinguished Visitor from Practice in 2007. Previously, Mr. Olson was the Distinguished Visiting Practitioner in Residence at Cornell Law School and taught corporate governance at Northwestern University School of Law. At Georgetown, he teaches an advanced seminar in securities regulation and a seminar on governance of non-profit organizations.

A frequent lecturer at legal and business seminars, Professor Olson co-chairs various seminars on an annual basis. He is on the executive committee for the San Diego Securities Regulation Institute and the advisory committee for the Practicing Law Institute’s Annual Securities Regulation Institute. He is the author of more than 100 articles and a member of the editorial advisory boards for a variety of securities and corporate law publications.

In the American Bar Association (ABA), Professor Olson served for five years (2000-2005) as Chairman of the Business Law Section’s Corporate Governance Committee, and was also a member of the Task Force on Corporate Responsibility appointed by the President of the ABA. Previously, he was chairman of the ABA’s Federal Regulation of Securities Committee (1991-1995). He is a member of the Executive Council of the Securities Section of the Federal Bar Association.

For the ABA, Professor Olson also chaired the Task Force on Regulation of Insider Trading, which produced a comprehensive analysis of and report on U.S. insider trading law, and he chaired the Task Force which produced the third (2001) and fourth (2004) editions of The Corporate Director’s Guidebook. He has served for many years on the ABA’s Corporate Laws Committee, and has served as a Council member and member of the Publications Board of the ABA’s Business Law Section. He is on the Editorial Board of the Business Lawyer. He has been a member of the Legal Advisory Committee of the New York Stock Exchange and the Legal Advisory Board of the National Association of Securities Dealers (now FINRA). He was a founding trustee of the American College of Investment Counsel and was the inaugural chair of the American College of Governance Counsel.

Professor Olson was a founding partner of Gibson, Dunn &Crutcher’s Washington, D.C. office. Mr. Olson has extensive experience in general representation of business organizations on corporate governance, corporate securities, corporate finance and merger and acquisition matters. He has counseled many boards of directors and board committees on governance issues and in assessing shareholder litigation, responding to business combination proposals and conducting internal investigations. He also has represented firms and individuals in defense of Securities and Exchange Commission and other governmental investigations. Professor Olson led a team of his firm’s lawyers which advised the Board of the American Red Cross on a comprehensive audit of its governance practices in 2006 and has led teams investigating corporate governance failures and other sensitive matters for a number of other nonprofit organizations. In both 2010 and 2011, based on BTI Consulting’s independent survey of 200 corporate general counsel, he was named one of a small number of national Client Service All-Stars. In 2013, Mr. Olson was elected to the permanent Directorship 100 Hall of Fame of the National Association of Corporate Directors. He has been regularly ranked one of the top securities advisory attorneys in the District of Columbia by Chambers USA America’s Leading Business Lawyers and has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America®for corporate, securities, and governance work in every edition published since its inception. Mr. Olson was the founding Chair of the Board of Trustees of the American College of Governance Counsel (2015-2018).