Facebook hires D.C. insider to be its new general counsel
Facebook has hired Washington, D.C. lawyer Ted Ullyot to be its new general counsel. Ullyot previously held senior legal positions at AOL and was chief of staff for departed U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez in 2005. Most recently, he has been working as a partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
I spoke with Ullyot on Friday about the move. His jobs at AOL and in the government gave him plenty of opportunities to explore novel and interesting legal questions, he says, but it’s the range and newness of legal issues that get him excited about this one.
Facebook has been hiring hundreds of new employees over the last couple of years, as it has grown around the world. It now has more than 100 million monthly active users, making it the world’s largest social network. As a relatively young company, it’s still building out its legal framework for dealing with everything from basic employee law questions to new contracts with business partners, user privacy issues, litigation and its legal standing in countries around the globe.
[Ullyot image via Above the Law.]
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.
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