Tesla Adds Energy Firm’s Top Lawyer, Senior Employment Litigator

Tesla Inc. is continuing a legal hiring spree after the appointment of a new general counsel earlier this year.

The Elon Musk-led electric automaker has brought on a handful of lawyers to handle employment, energy, environmental, and litigation matters—areas in which Tesla has ongoing needs—within the past few weeks. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment about its legal hiring practices.

Christopher Dawood announced via LinkedIn this month that he’s joined Tesla as senior counsel for employment litigation. Dawood was previously an of counsel in the labor and employment litigation practice at Jackson Lewis in Sacramento.

Tesla has faced a number of labor and employment issues. The company recently lost a bid to move to arbitration harassment and wage claims filed by a former production associate who worked out of its factory in Fremont, Calif.

Dawood spent most of the last decade as an in-house litigator for a trio of California counties—Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, and San Diego—where he handled administrative law, appellate, civil rights, employment, and tort cases in state and federal courts. He joins Tesla after senior employment counsel Carmen Marinda—who also previously worked at Jackson Lewis—left this month for a litigation counsel role at Fenwick & West in Santa Monica, Calif.

Joseph Frost, most recently a general counsel and managing director of strategic ventures at Arb Energy LLC, also announced via LinkedIn his new role as managing counsel for energy products at Tesla. He fills a position the company publicly posted this year to “support the growth of its global energy business.”

Tesla has been in talks with energy giant Exxon Mobil Corp. about securing a supply of lithium, a crucial element used in electric car batteries.

Tesla, which parted ways this month with its former head of general litigation, is also facing a lawsuit related to the charging infrastructure for its vehicles.

Brandon Ehrhart, who was hired as Austin, Texas-based Tesla’s law unit leader in January, has used social media to continue Musk’s previous public pitch for “hardcore” litigators to join the company’s in-house team.

Musk subsequently took to Twitter, now rebranded X, to clarify.

“Tesla will continue to use outside litigators, but it’s important to build a powerful litigation team internally, so that we’re not always on the defensive,” Musk wrote earlier this year.

New Look Team

Within the last year Morgan, Lewis & Bockius has appeared the most often for the company in US federal courts, according to Bloomberg Law data. The law firm is handling labor and employment cases for Tesla, which hired longtime former Morgan Lewis partner Brian Jazaeri this year as its head of litigation.

Cravath, Swaine & Moore, which scored a big win for Musk and Tesla before Delaware’s top court in June, was the second most popular outside litigation firm for Tesla during that same period followed by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. Telsa tapped WilmerHale to defend it in a consumer class action, while Cravath advised the company on an agreement in July to return $735 million in stock and cash awards to end an investor lawsuit.

The new in-house litigation team has also started to take shape, with Tesla landing Franklin Brannen Jr. last month as an associate general counsel for litigation. Brannen was most recently vice chair of the lithium-ion battery practice at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith.

Tesla also picked up veteran intellectual property litigator Krista Carter, a former partner at now-defunct firms Dickstein Shapiro and Howrey, as managing counsel for IP litigation in June. Tesla has hired roughly a dozen in-house lawyers so far this year, additions that have been somewhat offset by a similar number of departures for legal jobs at other automakers and technology companies.

Tesla’s online jobs board currently lists two-dozen openings for in-house legal and government affairs roles in Austin, Fremont, and Washington.