U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. June 13, 2018. Photo credit: Diego Radzinschi/ALM

Google's decision to draft its top lawyer, Kent Walker, to represent the company at a congressional hearing on election security next week may have seemed like a good choice on paper.

Walker, who was recently named as the Mountain View, California-based company's senior vice president of global affairs, had spent years as the company's GC and had testified in front of Congress before, in 2017.

But despite Walker's deep expertise, Google's choice was rejected last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, who told the Washington Post he “wasn't accepting the senior vice president.”

While sending a company's current or former GC to testify in front of Congress has some benefits — they may need less pre-hearing training, they're intimately familiar with company legal issues, and they increasingly have a seat at the business table — it isn't always the right choice. That's especially true, experts say, if the committee has also invited a particular non-legal company executive to sit in the hot seat.

Ed Barks, a communications strategy consultant who does corporate witness preparation and testimony training, said it's possible the committee invited another Google leader, such as chief executive officer Sundar Pichai, to testify, and did not want to accept anyone else.

“The Intelligence Committee, as I understand, also has [Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey and [Facebook COO] Sheryl Sandberg on the witness list, so it's no surprise that they would look to someone with parallel responsibilities from Google,” Barks said. “And it's certainly in any committees' purview to insist on whoever they want to testify. And if they want somebody more senior than Kent Walker, that's within their rights.”

Even if a committee doesn't specifically ask for the CEO, other companies sending top executives can raise the bar and, Barks said, “put pressure on others” to also send higher-ups. When Walker testified in front of congressional committees  last year, he did so alongside legal leaders from Twitter and Facebook, not the companies' CEOs or COOs.

Barks said that, while a GC or CLO may be a good person to speak on arcane company legal matters, committees often want someone with a bigger title. And despite the fact that GCs are gaining more strategic and business clout, legislators may want someone with a broader perspective on company affairs.

WIlliam LaForge, the author of “Testifying Before Congress” and president of Delta State University, said it's also possible that the committee nixed Walker because he is an attorney.

“There are some committees who would say we don't want a lawyer to come parse words with us,” LaForge said. “We want to talk to the policy person, the person who knows these issues, and who is responsible for the issues at the end of the day.”

Companies that do want to send a GC or CLO in place of a CEO should have a strong explanation for the committee, Barks said, and a strong relationship with committee members. But even with these pieces in place, both he and LaForge acknowledged that, at the end of the day, it's up to the committee to decide who they will accept.

“Ultimately, the chair of the committee holds sway,” Barks said. “That's the bottom line.”