Facebook Sends Ted Ullyot a Friend Request

[WSJ_law_blog]

The L.A. Times’ Tech blog is reporting that Ted Ullyot — a former chief of staff to former AG Alberto Gonzales, a former AOL in-house lawyer and a former Kirkland & Ellis partner — is moving to San Fran to take the top legal job at Facebook.

“Ted has extremely strong connections with the Republican party, and we think that’s a good thing,” Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy (and himself a lawyer), told the LAT.



The 41 year-old Ullyot (Harvard, U. of Chicago law) began his legal career clerking for Justice Scalia and the Fourth Circuit’s J. Michael Luttig (who is now Boeing’s senior vice president and GC) before being recruited by Kenneth Starr to K&E. He then went to work for another K&E alum, AOL general counsel Paul Cappuccio, who’s now the GC of Time Warner. Ullyot later became senior vice president and general counsel for AOL Time Warner Europe.

After stints in the White House and the DOJ, he joined Eddie Lampert’s ESL Investments. In May, Ullyot returned to K&E as a partner, focusing on appellate litigation, administrative law and antitrust law.

Will Ullyot send Facebook business to K&E’s new Palo Alto office, the LAT asks? “I think of the firm in the highest terms, and I have used the firm in previous stints as general counsel,” he said. “I just look forward to getting into Facebook to see what the legal needs are.”