Meet Joe

Joe Clark helps clients find practical legal solutions that achieve their business and personal objectives. At Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd, Joe assists corporations, limited liability companies and other business associations.

SKILLSET

• •  Helping clients raise equity capital in compliance with federal and state securities laws through private placements and exempt offerings
• •  Drafting and reviewing corporate and commercial contracts
• •  Advising on organizational and internal governance
• •  Assisting with purchases and sales of business assets, interests in business entities, and goods and services

Joe provides legal counsel to professionals, owners of closely held businesses, farmers, landowners and other families and individuals in developing practical strategies for transferring assets between generations using wills, trusts and family entities, as well as minimizing estate and gift taxes. He assists families in probating wills, administering estates and trusts and complying with complex probate court and tax filing requirements.

EXPERIENCE

• •  Assisted a private bank-holding company in a private sale of its stock
• •  Assisted with the organization of a real estate investment fund that employed a private equity offering for its initial capitalization
• •  Handled a joint-venture transaction where his client invested in a software company, and the software company is developing software for use by the client and for licensing to others
• •  Assisted a closely held business with a sale of assets of a line of business to a strategic buyer

Prior to joining the team at Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd, Joe previously worked for First Union National Bank (1989-1992) and First National Bank of South Carolina and South Carolina National Bank (1983-1989).

Joe serves on Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd’s Management Committee.

• University of South Carolina, J.D., cum laude, 1995
• University of South Carolina, M.B.A., 1989
• University of South Carolina, B.A., 1983

• South Carolina, 1995

• The Best Lawyers in America© Corporate Law (2010-2025) and Securities/Capital Markets Law (2009-2025)
• Best Lawyers® 2018 Securities/Capital Markets Law “Lawyer of the Year” Columbia
• Best Lawyers® 2015 Corporate Law “Lawyer of the Year” Columbia
• Columbia Business Monthly "Legal Elite of the Midlands" Banking & Finance Law (2019-2020), Corporate Law - Mergers & Acquisitions (2020) and Corporate Law Securities (2024)
• South Carolina Lawyers Weekly Leadership in Law Award 2015

• South Carolina Bar, Past Chairperson of Corporations, Banking and Securities Law Section and Probate, Estate Planning and Trust Section
• American Bar Association, Business Law and Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Sections
• University of South Carolina School of Law, Adjunct Professor
• South Carolina Bar Transactional/Corporate Law Essentials Program, Course Planner and Speaker
• South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, Board of Directors
• Columbia Chamber of Commerce, former Board Member
• Corporations, Agency, Partnership, State-Specific Component of the Uniform Bar Examination for South Carolina, Speaker

• "Selected Issues Under the Securities Laws," SC Bar Transactional/Corporate Law Essentials, June 8, 2018
• Co-author of South Carolina Limited Liability Companies and Limited Liability Partnerships, 4th ed., 2012
• Co-author of South Carolina Corporate Practice Manual, 2nd ed., 2005