Williams & Connolly Chair Dane Butswinkas Is Named Tesla General Counsel
“After 30 years as a trial lawyer at Williams & Connolly, I would have never imagined joining a company in-house," Dane Butswinkas said in a statement from Tesla. He will succeed Todd Maron, general counsel since 2013.
December 07, 2018 at 08:54 AM
4 minute read
Williams & Connolly offices in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ ALM)
Dane Butswinkas, the Washington-based trial lawyer and chairman of Williams & Connolly, will become the next general counsel to Tesla Inc., arriving as the company attempts to climb out of a period of intense regulatory scrutiny.
Butswinkas, who has practiced at Williams & Connolly for 30 years and was serving as co-chair of the firm's commercial litigation and financial services and banking groups, replaces Todd Maron as the company's top in-house lawyer effective January. Maron had been general counsel since 2013.
“Williams & Connolly will always have been my first home. The lawyers there are the finest in the world,” Butswinkas said in a statement late Thursday issued by Tesla. “After 30 years as a trial lawyer at Williams & Connolly, I would have never imagined joining a company in-house. But Tesla presents a unique and inspiring opportunity. Tesla's mission is bigger than Tesla—one that is critical to the future of our planet. It's hard to identify a mission more timely, more essential, or more worth fighting for.”
Dane Butswinkas (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)Tesla said Butswinkas would still retain a relationship with Williams & Connolly. Butswinkas did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday morning.
“Williams & Connolly LLP is proud to report that partner Dane Butswinkas will become the new General Counsel of Tesla Inc. The firm congratulates Mr. Butswinkas, who will be a tremendous asset to Tesla and its leadership,” Williams & Connolly said in a statement Friday. The statement noted that Gerson Zweifach served as general counsel and chief compliance officer at 21st Century Fox while remaining at Williams & Connolly as senior counsel. Zweifach recently returned to the firm.
A spokesperson for Williams & Connolly said Butswinkas will remain a partner at the firm, adding that “his full-time job will be at Tesla, but he'll continue to help with client relations and strategic and administrative matters.”
Butswinkas will report to Tesla CEO Elon Musk and oversee the company's legal department and government affairs team. Musk stepped down as Tesla's chairman recently as part of a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over a series of tweets that had claimed he secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share.
Butswinkas represented Musk and Tesla in the SEC's lawsuit over those tweets, which was filed in September in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Tesla and Musk agreed to pay separate $20 million penalties to resolve the SEC's claims, in a settlement that also required the company to create a system for monitoring the chief executive's social media posts and other public statements.
Butswinkas may still have a mess to clean up for Musk at the SEC: Within days of his settlement, Musk appeared to mock the regulator, referring to it in a tweet as the “Shortseller Enrichment Commission.”
Tesla has also faced investigations from the National Transportation Safety Board into fatal crashes involving the company's autopilot technology.
Maron is not the only Tesla lawyer leaving the company. Philip Rothenberg, a top securities lawyer at Tesla who had been a vice president of legal, moved to a general counsel role at startup Sonder.
Maron said in a statement: “Being part of Tesla for the last five years has been the highlight of my career. Tesla has been like family to me, and I am extremely grateful to Elon, the board, the executive team, and everyone at Tesla for allowing me to play a part in this incredible company.”
Read more:
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Ryan Lovelace, C. Ryan Barber and Phillip Bantz contributed reporting.
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