(L to R) Heather Rafter, Kristin Sverchek (Lyft), Dev Stahlkopf (Microsoft), Dorian Daley (Oracle) and Kathy Hibbs (general counsel 23andme) at an American Bar Association panel titled (L to R) Heather Rafter, Kristin Sverchek (Lyft), Dev Stahlkopf (Microsoft), Dorian Daley (Oracle) and Kathy Hibbs (general counsel 23andme) at an American Bar Association panel titled “Shaping Our Future: Top Tech Company Lawyers on Innovation and Social Responsibility.” (Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)

Tech general counsel shared their innovation and diversity experiences at an American Bar Association annual meeting panel Friday in San Francisco.

The session, moderated by RafterMarsh U.S. principal Heather Rafter, brought together Lyft Inc.’s Kristin Sverchek, Microsoft Corp.’s Dev Stahlkopf, Oracle Corp.’s Dorian Daley and 23andMe’s Kathy Hibbs, all of whom lead legal teams working with emerging technology and regulations.

“It’s an interesting time to be [a] general counsel in tech, for sure. I wake up every day and the issue’s a little bit different. … It’s really issues where technology is moving so quickly that it’s outpacing social dialogue about it, outpacing regulations,” Stahlkopf said. She was promoted to Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft’s general counsel role last year.

Some of those issues include facial recognition, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence, the panelists said.

The general counsel all said they have worked with regulators on policies and education around innovative technologies that may not yet have clear legal guidelines. Daley said her team has worked with regulators worldwide. She, Sverchek and Stahlkopf all said they’ve teamed up with others in the industry, including competitors, to advance common goals.

Internally, the general counsel agreed ensuring new tech complies with the law as best as possible means getting lawyers embedded in product teams. Sverchek said Lyft has “several” lawyers working with its product team at any given time.

“Part of our jobs is built on embedding our teams with the development organization so that as these issues come up … we’ve got people that are right there having that discussion with developers,” Daley said. She has been the general counsel of Redwood City, California-based Oracle since 2007.

It’s also about spotting issues before they arise, Stahlkopf said.

Her team is currently working to improve facial recognition technology’s ability to identify diverse faces before launching the technology. Public data sets mostly include white male faces, which made tools less able to discern women and people of color’s faces and could lead to “bias that could be pretty harmful” if not addressed proactively, she said.

The importance of having varied input on emerging technologies is one reason Stahlkopf and the other general counsel panelists said they have pushed for increasing diversity in-house and at the firms they hire.

“We are working on cutting-edge technology. We need people from a diversity of backgrounds to be able to really do that, looking around corners, proactively identifying issues. … If the data set is all white men you’re necessarily missing part of the broader picture,” Sverchek said.

Sverchek, who has led San Francisco-based Lyft’s legal team since its founding, is one of more than 200 general counsel who signed on to a letter pushing firms to diversify earlier this year. She and the other panelists, all women, said their roles as legal execs at large tech companies have allowed them to spot and promote diverse talent.