Round Up: General Counsel Sound Off, Take Jobs

Here’s what general counsel had to say the past week:

Journalism and free speech in the Trump Era

“Libel is back. If you haven’t heard it before, you’ll hear it from me now... I think that Trump is not responsible for that, obviously, but our president has contributed to the atmosphere with which people feel that they can bring crazy claims against the media and maybe win.”

-Lynn Oberlander, general counsel, Gizmodo Media, as told to a group of Columbia Journalism School students.

Russian meddling with the 2016 election

“We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election. That is an assessment that can be made only by investigators with access to classified intelligence and information from all relevant companies and industries — and we want to do our part.”

-Colin Stretch, general counsel of Facebook, wrote in a blog post that addressed the company’s decision to provide information to Congress relating to 3,000 ads that were purchased around the 2016 presidential campaign. Those ads appear to be linked to a Russian company.

Terrorist organizations posting online

“Removing all of this content within a few hours, or even stopping it from getting there in the first place, poses an enormous technological and scientific challenge that we continue to undertake... The haystacks here are unimaginably large, and the needles are both really small and constantly changing.”

Kent Walker, general counsel of Google, said while speaking to world leaders during a meeting at the UN General Assembly about removing “terrorist content” online.

Here’s who’s on the move:

Uber’s legal team continues to grow, Office Depot has a new chief legal officer and a tech company looks to hire from within.

• N. David Bleisch has joined Office Depot as its executive vice president, chief legal officer and corporate secretary. Bleisch has experience in securities compliance, corporate finance, labor and employment issues and litigation among other legal skills and areas of expertise. Bleisch comes to Office Depot from The ADT Corporation, where he was senior vice president and chief legal officer, according to his LinkedIn page.

• Uber may have a new chief legal officer, according to a travel industry website. Skift has named Burke Norton, a recent chief legal officer at Salesforce, as a potential pick for the ride sharing app’s legal team. Norton has worked in corporate legal departments for over ten years and led Salesforce’s legal, internal audit, compliance, and government affairs teams according to his archived biography on Salesforce’s website .

• Content delivery network company Akamai has found a new general counsel, Aaron Ahola. Ahola is the company’s current deputy general counsel and will succeed Melanie Haratunian, who is retiring as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. Ahola joined the company’s legal department in 2000 and has focused on securities, global compliance, mergers and acquisitions and international regulations among other issues according to a company release. Previously, he was an associate at Ropes & Gray.

• Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, has chosen Alex Driggs to become its general counsel and corporate secretary. He started at the company as associate general counsel in 2015, according to a company release, and has served as acting general counsel since June 2017.

Before joining the company, he was a legal consultant for biotech clients, according to the release, and has held positions at Amgen Inc. and Micromet, Inc., two companies in biopharma and biotech. He began his career at Cooley working in life sciences and technology.

Write to the reporter at maxsiegelbaum@gmail.com.

Write to the editor at csullivan@bloomberglaw.com.