Erin E. Martin

Before joining Morgan Lewis, Erin served as legal branch chief in the SEC’s Office of Real Estate and Construction, where she oversaw legal reviews of transactional filings and periodic reports filed by a wide range of public companies, including special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), real estate investment trusts (REITs), real estate platforms, and real estate–related finance companies. Throughout her more than 13-year career at the SEC, Erin served in other leadership roles, which included oversight of disclosure filings made by financial institutions, including fintech, marketplace lenders, banks, and bank holding companies as well as offerings of crypto assets, including the first public offerings of tokens, and other crypto exchange-traded products.

As legal branch chief, Erin managed the disclosure review program related to filings by companies in a variety of industries, such as real estate, including equity REITs, mortgage REITs, and non-listed REITs; lodging; consulting services; and commodities, including ’33 Act exchange-traded products. As the senior legal advisor in the office, she was ultimately responsible for the legal reviews of all securities transactions and required SEC filings, such as initial public offerings, secondary offerings, spinoffs, mergers and acquisitions, tender offers, annual and quarterly filings, proxy materials, and sales literature. In addition, she managed the division’s review program for offerings of crypto assets and regularly participated in the SEC’s cross-divisional Distributed Ledger Technology Working Group.

During her tenure at the SEC, Erin also served as special counsel in the Office of Financial Services, where she led legal reviews of transactional filings and periodic reports filed by financial institutions, including systematically important financial institutions, and advanced the office’s expertise on marketplace lending. Erin also served as a legal and policy advisor in the Division of Corporation Finance’s Office of Chief Counsel, where she provided interpretative legal guidance concerning many aspects of the federal securities laws, including exemptive positions and requests for no-action relief. She also spent many proxy seasons as part of the Office of Chief Counsel’s Rule 14a-8 Shareholder Proposal Taskforce and served as co-manager of the taskforce for the 2013–2014 proxy season.

Erin also participated in numerous initiatives related to new rules and regulations, such as the JOBS Act and FAST Act. She has advised on numerous disclosure-related projects, such as disclosure modernization and proxy disclosure enhancements related to executive compensation and board diversity and qualifications, and regularly provided trainings to SEC staff on interpretative issues relating to the disclosure review program and other emerging areas of interest.