Meta disclosed how much it paid WilmerHale in 2024 because the firm’s senior international counsel, Robert Kimmitt, was named lead independent director in 2020 for the Mark Zuckerberg-led company. Meta and other US publicly traded companies often disclose professional relationships and transactions related to independent board members.
WilmerHale provided legal services to Meta last year that amounted to “approximately 3%” of the firm’s gross revenue, according to Meta’s most recent proxy statement. WilmerHale disclosed to The American Lawyer in March that its gross revenue passed the $1.6 billion mark in 2024, putting the firm’s tally for Meta at roughly $48 million. That figure is down from the $67 million that WilmerHale received from Meta in 2023 and $75 million in 2022. The firm also earned about $65 million from Meta in 2021.
WilmerHale was targeted by the Trump administration over its ties to former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, who served as special counsel for an investigation into President Donald Trump during his first term. The firm last month sued the administration and hired conservative litigator and former US Solicitor General Paul Clement to secure a temporary ban on Trump’s executive order.
Meta has sought to bolster its ties to the White House by adding new members to its board since Trump was elected in November. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee.
Kimmitt, a former WilmerHale partner who once served as the US ambassador to Germany, received more than $658,000 in total compensation for his services to Meta last year, the proxy statement said.
WilmerHale is one of several firms representing Meta—the owner of social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, as well as messaging service WhatsApp—in a high-profile trial this week in a case filed by the US Federal Trade Commission that seeks to potentially break up the technology giant. Zuckerberg and others have testified in the proceedings. Mark Hansen of Washington-based litigation boutique Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick is lead counsel to Meta in the case.
WilmerHale’s Kimmitt “does not have influence over the selection of our company’s legal counsel,” according to Meta’s proxy filing. The Menlo Park, California-based company noted that the firm has Kimmitt “walled off” from “any legal representation of Meta undertaken by WilmerHale.”
The firm, which late Thursday filed its opposition to the government’s motion to dismiss its action against Trump, didn’t respond to a request for comment about its work or relationship with Meta.
Legal Team Changes
Meta’s chief legal officer Jennifer Newstead, a former Davis Polk & Wardwell partner who joined the company as its top in-house lawyer in 2019, has been among several key executives to attend the FTC trial. Meta didn’t list Newstead as one of its five highest-paid executives last year.
Newstead, who received a $19 million total compensation package for joining Meta, oversees all global legal matters for the company—including corporate governance and product and regulatory counseling—and its various subsidiaries. Newstead owns about $14.3 million in Meta stock, according to Bloomberg data. Securities filings show that she’s sold off more than $8.6 million in company shares so far this year.
Meta’s legal and policy teams have had several key personnel changes in recent months. Joel Kaplan, a Harvard Law School graduate and former Republican strategist, was named its new chief global affairs officer following Trump’s election in November.
In January, Meta hired King & Spalding partner Ethan Davis, a former clerk to US Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch who served as a senior Justice Department official during the first Trump administration, to be its head of global litigation strategy.
Davis’position is a new one at Meta that complements the company’s deputy general counsel for global litigation D. Scott Tucker, who was hired from Morgan Stanley in 2021. Meta also recruited Michael Haven, a veteran legal operations professional, from Intel Corp. to be its new global head of legal operations in December. Meta’s pivot politically, however, has had some consequences.
Roy Austin Jr., hired by Meta in 2021 as a deputy general counsel to head the company’s civil rights strategy, announced his resignation in January. Maxine Williams, Meta’s longtime chief diversity officer, took on a new “accessibility and engagement” role that same month as the company announced it would disband its diversity programs.
Those changes led one of Meta’s many outside counsel, Silicon Valley litigator Mark Lemley, to declare he would no longer represent the company.
Meta recently saw one of its former general counsel, Theodore “Ted” Ullyot, return to the C-suite as the top lawyer for the NFL. Ullyot was succeeded at Meta—then known as Facebook—in 2013 by Colin Stretch, who served as the company’s top lawyer until turning over that role to Newstead.
Etsy Inc. hired Stretch to be its legal chief in 2023. The e-commerce company disclosed in a proxy statement filed Thursday that Stretch earned more than $7.5 million in total compensation last year.
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