Facebook's appointment of Ted Ullyot as its first general counsel might spook some in freewheeling Silicon Valley: he served as chief of staff to former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and as an associate counsel to President George W. Bush.
But in an interview Monday with CNET News, Ullyot said that his past resume will make it easier for the fast-growing social network to deal with Washington insiders--because he used to be one himself.
"Having served in the executive branch in Washington and also in the judicial branch, I have a pretty good understanding of those issues," Ullyot said. "So to the extent that matters come up in those areas that have a legal component as distinct from a purely policy component, having a background in the federal government can help you understand the way government regulators think."
Ullyot declined to provide specifics on his role at Facebook, which he starts in the middle of October, with the justification that he isn't yet familiar enough with the company's workings. Fair enough.
For example, he wouldn't make a call on what would happen to any still-extant lawsuits against the ill-fated Beacon advertising program, or whether Facebook would take a stand against the U.S. House of Representatives' rejection of Monday's $700 billion Wall Street bailout. The general counsel at Microsoft, which has a $240 million stake in Facebook, has petitioned to the government to reconsider. "I'd just want to take a look at the issues," Ullyot said.
"In my prior senses (as a general counsel), what I've really concluded in those is that every company is very different, unique, and has a particular sense of legal issues and challenges," Ullyot explained. "And so the key for me, for any general counsel, is going to be to come on board, to study the issues, immerse yourself in the company, ask a lot of questions, and just get up to speed on the issues as fast as you can, so that's what you look forward to doing."
Ullyot said that Facebook had been looking to hire a general counsel for some time now, and that there was no particular reason that he was hired now as opposed to several months ago or down the road. In other words, Facebook didn't hire a full-time lawyer to bail it out of anything--though Ullyot might find himself dealing with the film and publishing industries soon, if an allegedly unsavory book and movie about Facebook's origins end up coming to fruition.
"Just getting to know it, (Facebook) is very mindful of Washington, very aware of Washington, and very savvy in the ways of Washington already," said Ullyot, who will relocate to the company's Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters but will spend time in D.C. as needed. "I think that comes from Elliot Schrage heading up policy, and having someone like Sheryl Sandberg as COO, with her extensive Washington background as a chief of staff herself at a Cabinet agency."
So, not surprisingly, he thinks it's been good for Facebook to have seasoned executives on board to help its young founding team navigate their way through the real world. But he added that Facebook's existing legal team, which has been working with outside counsel, has done "an excellent job."
He did say that his role at Facebook will probably also reach the thousands of third-party developers working on the social network's developer platform; some of Facebook's most recent legal issues, like the Scrabulous affair, have dealt with the platform rather than the site itself. "To the extent that we've got legal interactions with (developers), contractual or otherwise, or working on standards, I would expect that legal is involved in those," Ullyot said.
There was one question he could answer concretely: Though Ullyot's undergraduate years at Harvard overlapped with COO Sheryl Sandberg's, he said that the two of them did not know each other.
Facebook has hired the former chief of staff to onetime U.S. Attorney Alberto Gonzales as its general counsel, according to the Los Angeles Times. Ted Ullyot, currently a Washington, D.C.-based partner for the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, will relocate to the Bay Area and join the Palo Alto social network next month.
He appears to have been hand-picked by Elliot Schrage, the former Google executive who joined Facebook as vice president of communications and public policy this spring, and Sheryl Sandberg, another Google alum who now serves as the company's chief operating officer.
Ullyot "has an extraordinary combination of private legal practice and public sector experience," Schrage told the Los Angeles Times. "So many of the legal issues we face touch on both of those arenas. He is equally comfortable helping us expand internationally as he is in helping us navigate complicated legal issues we may face in Washington. Ted's arrival really demonstrates we're a little more grown-up."
"Grown up" is a necessity for Facebook's image these days; founder Mark Zuckerberg is only 24, and after the public relations clusterbomb that was the "Beacon" advertising program, it was clear that some more seasoned executives had to be brought on board.
Ted Ullyot
(Credit: Kirkland & Ellis)Ullyot joins Facebook fewer than six months into his stint at Kirkland & Ellis, though he had been at the law firm from 1996 to 2002 before serving as general counsel for AOL Time Warner Europe out of the company's London office and then general counsel for the Greenwich, Conn.-based ESL Investments, the billion-dollar hedge fund founded by Edward Lampert.
Between 2003 and 2005, Ullyot occupied a number of positions in the federal government, including chief of staff of the Department of Justice and associate counsel to President George W. Bush. Most famously, he handled the federal government's response to the headline-grabbing Valerie Plame CIA leak.
"Ted has extremely strong connections with the Republican party, and we think that's a good thing," Schrage told the Times. COO Sandberg, on the other hand, has political experience from the other side of the aisle: she served as chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton's Department of the Treasury.
Like many of Facebook's top executives, Ullyot attended Harvard University, where the social network was birthed in Zuckerberg's dorm room in 2004. Ullyot obtained his undergraduate degree from the elite college in 1989, two years ahead of Sandberg; an old Harvard Crimson article hints that he competed on the cross-country team. In addition to Sandberg and Zuckerberg (who dropped out to work on Facebook full-time), Schrage is also a Harvard graduate--he obtained his law degree there.
Some of Facebook's most famous legal problems have their roots at Harvard, too. The founders of ConnectU, the would-be social network that only recently settled a years-old intellectual property suit against Zuckerberg, were members of the class of 2004.
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