Uber Technologies general counsel Salle Yoo is being promoted to chief legal officer, as the company begins the search for a new general counsel to handle daily legal and regulatory work, according to an internal email from CEO Travis Kalanick.

Yoo, in her new role as chief legal officer, general counsel and corporate secretary, will work with Uber executives and newly hired senior vice-president and chief human resources officer Liane Hornsey, to "help drive critical company initiatives like equal pay, increasing diversity in our business, and building a strong cultural foundation for the future of Uber," Kalanick wrote in the email, first reported by Business Insider.

An Uber spokesperson validated the Kalanick email, but would not provide further information about Yoo's promotion.

It is unclear what role the new GC will play in Uber's recent dam-burst of legal issues, including its internal investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against a former employee, its titanic trade secrets fight against Google self-driving subsidiary Waymo, and a recently announced US Justice Department investigation into the company's use of regulator-skirting software.

The dual chief legal officer and general counsel structure is not unusual in Silicon Valley.

In 2006, long before Google's restructuring under Alphabet, the company hired former eBay deputy general counsel Kent Walker into the company's GC role, bumping former GC David Drummond into a higher position as chief legal officer. In April 2016, Airbnb announced its hiring of Rob Chesnut as general counsel. Chesnut filled in for former GC Belinda Johnson who, in 2015, was promoted to chief business affairs and legal officer. Chesnut said at the time he would work on litigation, corporate matters and intellectual property work. Salesforce.com also has a similar structure, with Burke Norton as chief legal officer and Amy Weaver as GC. The new Uber GC will report to Yoo.

Yoo came to Uber in July 2012, leaving behind a 13-year career at Davis Wright & Tremaine, a firm that still counts Uber as a client. In her first three years on the job, she built up a 70-person legal department, which included 36 US-based lawyers, 20 paralegals and seven administrative staffers. The legal department has since ballooned to more than 100 employees, and a Corporate Counsel analysis of current Uber counsel in March found roughly 80 in-house lawyers in San Francisco alone. The company also has lawyers in Chicago and Washington DC.

Yoo has remained quiet in the media, granting few interviews. In 2016, she delivered the keynote address at The Recorder's Women Leaders in Tech Law event in San Francisco.

At the event, Yoo advocated for hiring more women and ethnic minorities as outside counsel. She told attendees to "be intentional" in who they call when assigning a new legal matter. The first lawyer you call, Yoo said, is often the lawyer who can claim you as a client.

"Women cannot become partners, and they certainly cannot become powerful partners, ones that could demand and effect change, without a book of business," Yoo said then. "If we fail to be intentional about who we call, we are failing to optimise the opportunity that we have, as clients, to effect real change in law firms."