At least a dozen company lawyers have left their posts this year, according to three people familiar with Tesla’s operations. They include several lawyers who have worked in business units outside the law, including human resources and tax, the people said.
The company has no counsel or chief legal officer listed among its top three executives and has been without a permanent general counsel since December 2019.
“The GC should be a direct report to the CEO and an essential member of the senior C-suite executive team for any company that is serious about bringing together performance, integrity and risk management,” said Benjamin Heineman Jr., a corporate governance expert. and former general counsel at General Electric Co.
Those who have worked with Musk over the years praise him as an eccentric genius, but also someone whose background in technology has led him to value engineers more than the lawyers who work in a profession he has encountered in and out of court or at the negotiating table.
David Searle, the head of the legal department who led an internal investigation into purchase orders at the electric vehicle maker, left his post less than a month ago, Bloomberg reported on Aug. 17, citing three people. familiar with this matter. Tesla in a tweet from its verified account denied that Searle had left the company.
Searle had been put in charge of an internal investigation into the role of Musk lieutenant Omead Afshar in a scheme to buy hard-to-obtain construction materials, Bloomberg reported on July 21.
Dinna Eskin, who joined Tesla in 2017 after serving as senior counsel for the Polytechnic Institute of the State University of New York in Albany, NY, has taken over as chief legal officer, three sources said. She is at least the fifth best lawyer the company has had since 2019 and the seventh since the end of 2018.
Musk’s public statements have alienated some former backers and drawn the attention of government officials. He also faces a lawsuit from Twitter Inc. for his discounted $44 billion bid for the social media company.
Shareholder Complaints
Shareholders have raised concerns in recent years about Tesla’s lack of a dedicated general counsel or chief legal officer.
A complaint unsealed last year in a Delaware derivatives lawsuit filed against Tesla by investor Chase Gharrity accused the company’s board of failing to ensure the automaker had an “independent general counsel who can provide advice untainted by Musk” and “who could provide advice on what was in Tesla’s best interest.”
Tesla’s longest-serving chief legal officer was Todd Maron, a former divorce lawyer for Musk who left in late 2018 after nearly five years as general counsel. Maron is now the lead attorney at medical apparel startup FIGS Inc.
Tesla tapped Dane Butswinkas — a former personal attorney for Musk — to replace Maro. Butswinkas spent two months in the job before leaving in early 2019 to return to law firm Williams & Connolly.
Jonathan Chang succeeded Butswinkas as general counsel until he too resigned from the company in December 2019.
Tesla is building a strong litigation department where we directly initiate and execute lawsuits. The team will report directly to me.
Please submit 3 to 5 paragraphs describing evidence of exceptional ability.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 20, 2022
Chang, now chief legal officer at artificial intelligence startup SambaNova Systems Inc., was the last general counsel at Tesla not to have the word “executive” in his title.
Tesla then turned to former automotive safety engineer Alan Prescott, who had worked in the legal departments at Ford Motor Co. and Uber Technologies Inc., to become its general counsel. Prescott left Tesla last year for Luminar Technologies Inc., a maker of sensor technology used in driverless cars that gave him a pay package of about $30 million to lead its legal team.
Bill Berry, a longtime lawyer at Alphabet Inc.’s Google who joined Tesla in 2020 as head of litigation, replaced Prescott. Berry, who recently became general counsel for cloud security company Verkada Inc., left Tesla late last year.
In January, former Tesla HR chief Valerie Capers Workman joined career placement services startup Handshake as its lead attorney. Workman had been one of the company’s top Black executives.
Hiring through Twitter
Tesla — and more publicly, Musk — have moved to replenish the company’s legal ranks.
Michael Munro
Photo: Rodrigo Buendia/AFP via Getty Images
Musk took to Twitter in May to discuss Tesla’s plans to build a “fierce litigation department” that will report directly to him. In an interview in July, Musk said his call for new legal recruits was heard.
“A lot of really talented lawyers have sent in some sort of resume, and we’re actually going through that,” he told the Getting Stoned podcast. “We’re going to hire a bunch of people who responded to my tweet.”
An online job board at Tesla currently lists openings for a dozen legal and US government positions in Austin, Texas and Fremont, California.
Tesla recruited a new head of compliance in Michael Munro, the former head of compliance for Odebrecht SA, a Brazilian engineering and construction giant.
Munro, who was also a longtime attorney in the oil and gas industry, works at Tesla’s new corporate headquarters in Austin. he has previously spoken about his compliance efforts at Odebrecht, which went bankrupt and restructured its operations after a corruption scandal.
Derek Windham, a deputy general counsel for corporates and securities who was most recently a corporate governance expert at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., has joined Munro at Tesla.
Neither Munro nor Windham responded to requests for comment.
