Brad Smith, Microsoft's General Counsel

							General Counsel Consulting Career Feature


Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel
By Rebecca Neely


Brad Smith is Microsoft’s general counsel and senior vice president, Legal and Corporate Affairs. He leads the company’s Department
of Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA), which has just over 1,000 employees and is responsible for the company’s legal work, its
intellectual property portfolio, and its government affairs and philanthropic work. He also serves as Microsoft’s corporate secretary
and its chief compliance officer.




Since becoming general counsel in 2002, Smith has overseen            also chairs the Advocacy Committee of the Association of
numerous negotiations which have led to competition law and           Corporate Counsel, co-chairs the Board of Directors of Kids in
intellectual property agreements with governments and with            Need of Defense (KIND), and serves on the board executive
companies across the IT sector. He has helped spearhead the           committees of the Business Software Alliance, the Seattle
growth in the company’s intellectual property portfolio and           Foundation, and the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity.
the launch of global campaigns to bring enforcement actions
against those engaged in software piracy and counterfeiting,          According to the September 23rd article at Bloomberg.
malware, consumer fraud, and other digital crimes. As                 com, Microsoft Corp. is urging an overhaul of U.S. laws
software has migrated online and into a computing “cloud,”            for electronic privacy to help new services such as cloud
(collecting and storing data using remote computer servers)           computing, a technology that may double sales in five years.
one of LCA’s current principal goals is to help establish the
legal foundation for this next generation of technology.              At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington earlier
                                                                      this week, Smith explained that as more data are stored
Smith has played a central role in ensuring that Microsoft            on remote servers and away from personal computers, the
fulfills its corporate responsibilities. In recent years Microsoft    Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed by Congress in
has consistently ranked in the top 2 percent of the S&P 500           1986 in an effort to give law enforcement agencies access to
for corporate governance scores. During Smith’s tenure, the           information while preserving an individual’s right to privacy,
company’s citizenship programs have reached 280 million               needs to be updated to give consumers confidence their
people in 110 countries through technology training programs          information is protected.
that help individuals develop the skills needed to obtain jobs.
Smith has also helped advance several significant diversity           ‘’The law needs to catch up,’’ Smith said after the hearing.
and pro bono initiatives, both within Microsoft and in the            Cloud computing is ‘’a critical part of the future and quite
broader legal profession.                                             central to all that we’re doing.’’


Before joining Microsoft in 1993, Smith was a partner at              ‘’We recognize that enterprises and individual consumers will
Covington & Burling. He graduated summa cum laude from                only use new technologies if they have confidence that their
Princeton University and received his law degree at the               information will be reasonably protected,’’ Smith said in his
Columbia University School of Law.                                    testimony.


Smith has written numerous articles regarding international           Cloud computing may generate global sales of $148.8 billion
intellectual property and electronic commerce issues, and has         by the end of 2014, up from $58.6 billion last year, according
served as a lecturer at The Hague Academy of International            to researcher Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut. If
Law.                                                                  consumers worry about online security, it could limit the
                                                                      industry’s growth, Smith said in prepared testimony.
Smith currently serves as chair of the Washington Roundtable,
a leading Washington state-based business organization. He




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