Jonathan Butler, GC for Lucid Motors/courtesy photo Jonathan Butler, GC for Lucid Motors/courtesy photo

Electric car maker Lucid Motors Inc. has picked up a new general counsel from rival Tesla Inc.'s legal department, which still remains without a named top lawyer after losing three general counsel last year. 

Lucid announced this week that it hired former Tesla deputy general counsel Jonathan Butler to serve as the Newark, California-based company's general counsel and vice president. Butler, who spent more than eight years in Tesla's legal department, started his new job from home on April 27.  

"I was a bit concerned about switching to a new job in the middle of a pandemic," he said. "But, frankly, it's gone off seamlessly and the company has remained incredibly productive while working remotely."

Butler is among more than 120 new hires at Lucid since the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, according to the company. He continues to work remotely.

He stressed that the company's leaders are "going to great lengths to make sure that we have strong measures in place, robust health and safety, personal protective equipment and protocols to keep our people safe as they start returning to the office."

Butler joins Lucid as the company prepares to produce its first electric car, the Lucid Air, at a factory being built in Casa Grande, Arizona. Lucid has $1 billion in backing from Saudi Arabia and a strategic partnership with South Korea's Samsung SDI Co. and LG Chem Ltd.

"I view myself as one of the key support functions. I'm going to support the company and help enable all of its goals," Butler said Thursday in an interview. "My top priorities are helping the company grow, diversify, expand and make sure that it's underpinned by a strong culture of compliance and continuing to attract and keep really good talent." 

Before Butler went in-house at Tesla, he worked as a senior associate in Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman's litigation and global sourcing and technology transactions practices. While at the international law firm, he served for a year as an in-house counsel on secondment at Airbus in France, where he worked on corporate investigations, managed outside counsel, analyzed product liability claims and did legal compliance research, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

Butler said his experiences at Tesla and in Big Law "are all going to feed into the approach that I bring to issues. I think the benefit of having worked at Tesla is that I was exposed to so many interesting and challenging projects and undertakings.

"I have a wealth of experience that will help guide Lucid through the challenges that it may face in the future," he added. "I'm really leaning on the experience I accumulated there. But beyond that, I'm not really sure that the specific experiences at Tesla will inform how I approach things at Lucid." 

Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson, a former chief engineer at Tesla, said in a statement that Butler "will be key to fulfilling our mission to deliver the best possible electric vehicle experience.

"He will not only lead all of Lucid's efforts related to legal, compliance, and public policy, but will also be responsible for protecting Lucid's prodigious intellectual property and ensuring we remain ahead of the competition well into the future," Rawlinson added. 

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