Tech Law Insights: Ben Lee’s Extraordinary In-House Career

John is joined by Ben Lee, Chief Legal Officer of Reddit.  They discuss Ben’s extensive career as a senior in-house lawyer in several of the most successful tech companies in the world.  After earning degrees in physics and economics, Ben worked at IBM's research lab, where he was intrigued by the way lawyers grappled with the impacts of technology on society.  Ben then went to law school and began his career as a litigator at a New York law firm but left to work at the Legal Aid Society.  Financial realities eventually led him back to private practice and then to a career in-house.  At AT&T and NEC, Ben worked closely with pioneering computer scientists and handled complex IP matters involving emerging technologies like machine learning and AI.  When he moved to Google, Ben advised on major projects like Chrome, Android, and Google Cloud at very early stages when their success was far from assured.  Ben later joined Twitter during its early, fast-paced growth phase, managing litigation, IP, employment, and regulatory issues.  He led Twitter’s lawsuit against the U.S. government over transparency for national security requests.  Later, at Airbnb, Ben tackled challenging regulatory landscapes worldwide, and at Plaid, he advocated for consumers’ rights to financial data.  At Reddit, Ben now oversees all legal functions for a vast online platform with over 100,000 user-created and moderated communities.  Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is vital to Reddit’s success.  It provides that online users and platforms are generally not liable for content created by others.  Section 230 protects Reddit’s content moderation decisions, the decisions of its volunteer community moderators and its individual users.  Finally, Ben advises young in-house lawyers to remember that their job is not to just point out all potential legal risks in a project, but to help their teams manage those risks so they can build great products and move companies forward.

Podcast Link: Law-disrupted.fm
Host: John B. Quinn 
Producer: Alexis Hyde
Music and Editing by: Alexander Rossi

Transcript

JOHN QUINN: [00:00:00] This is John Quinn and this is Law Disrupted. And today we're speaking with Ben Lee, who is, and for the last two years, , has, how long Ben? 

BEN LEE: Oh gosh. It's, , it's over five now. It's getting near six, yeah, 

JOHN QUINN: six years at a newly public company, which he, from a legal, in-house legal standpoint oversaw, read it.

But Reddit is not his first in-house legal tech job. In fact, , Ben has probably had more in-house legal tech jobs on various platforms in the Bay Area than any other lawyer around. He, he's worked at IBM, he's worked at at t Research, he's been at NEC, Google, Twitter, Airbnb, plaid, and now Reddit. What's the problem, Ben?

You can't hold a job. 

BEN LEE: I, I will have, you [00:01:00] know that at every single place, including the, like, my stint at both IBM and at TI entered every single one of these roles saying, this is where I'm going to retire. This is definitely where I'm going to retire. I, I remember it vividly at at t. I was like, I'm gonna retire here, 

JOHN QUINN: right?

And in seduced by another opportunity. 

BEN LEE: I guess it's a perspective issue. Um, but, but definitely things, things moved on at some point. 

JOHN QUINN: Well, let's, let's talk, I, I'd really like to go through your, your career and talk about some of the learnings, um, that you've picked up along the way. Your first job, , as I understand, was not a legal job per se.

You were at IBM's TJ Watson Lab on the technical side. What were you doing there? But before that, what was your educational background? What were you doing before that? 

BEN LEE: Oh, my, so my educational background was, [00:02:00] so, , my background's actually in physics. 

JOHN QUINN: Mm-hmm. 

BEN LEE: Um, you know, so in that sense, like I am, . A person who has been enticed away from physics and has been meandering around doing other things rather than what they were supposed to be doing, which is, um, working on their, their grad program.

I, I ended up dropping out of the grad program of physics and then, um. I had to justify my existence in, in college. So I, I got another degree in addition to my physics degree, a , economics degree, and, and then applied to law school. 

JOHN QUINN: What's, what inspired you to do that? 

BEN LEE: , so, you know, I wrote in my application, I remember my law school application very vividly because I said the legal profession needed more lawyers that have a better understanding of technology, you know, to better help guide the development of law and policy.

[00:03:00] So, you know, the irony of it is I. But I'm not certain I actually believed it when I wrote it. Um, I actually, you know, my career has ended up that way. That that's exactly, like, literally I feel like I called that shot right from the beginning. But, um, the reason why I say that I, I'm not certain, I actually believed it is like one of my first legal roles was not in technology.

I worked at the Legal Aid Society, as you know, the equivalent of a public defender in their criminal appeals bureau. Um, and I really enjoyed that work. I was probably should, like I said before I entered, that probably should be retired from there. Yeah, I still have been doing that. 

JOHN QUINN: What, what sparked your interest in the background, , , in physics?

, in the in science subjects? What sparked your interest in law? 

BEN LEE: I, I do have to admit that when I was at IBM. The lawyers stuck out [00:04:00] quite a bit, and I remember like talking to one and, and being introduced to the law, like there's nobody in my family who is a lawyer, um, you know, , at that time. And so like my introduction to the law was, was really through like seeing they, they stuck out quite a bit.

At the research lab because they're the only ones like wearing suits. Mm-hmm. They were kind of forced to wear suits. All of the rest of us just dressed at ibm. 

JOHN QUINN: Yeah. You and kind of blue shirts. Right. And, , 

BEN LEE: yeah. No, it was, it was very formal in those old days. And you know, I, I thought what they were working on was interesting.

It was different and all that then, and, and they looked at the universe very differently. And, um, I. I think that like one of the things I felt that they did that was very interesting, especially from the technology side, was deal with the ramifications of the technology. Mm-hmm. 

JOHN QUINN: You know, 

BEN LEE: like how does society actually have to deal with [00:05:00] the technology that you're creating?

You know, so much of. , technology has like these secondary social effects as a general matter and, and changes us in ways that we don't really anticipate. And, um, it felt like lawyers were the ones who were dealing with those issues and, and, and often had the authority to kind of try to, try to make sense of it.

JOHN QUINN: So did you end up gonna law school after your work at IBM? 

BEN LEE: Yeah, I worked at the summers at IBM and I. Yeah, exactly. I ended up going after to, to law school and you know, it, , I dunno if I really enjoyed law school. I did. You did you enjoy law school? 

JOHN QUINN: That's a good question. , I don't think so. ,

Harvard. I, I thought I didn't belong there. My first year. There were all these [00:06:00] kids that seemed much smarter and they went to these fancy schools and the like, I, I, I thought I was an imposter. 

BEN LEE: I didn't feel like I belonged there. Also, I, although like I, it, it wasn't that, like I felt like, you know, I don't know.

I felt largely because I felt like they were kind of culturally from like at least a lot of them, like had relatives who were lawyers or like they kind of understood the culture better or they understood like in essence like what we were trying to do. I feel like I didn't know really what it was to be a lawyer to actually, until like I worked at Legal Aid.

You had clients that depended on me and having to argue in court and, and do things like that 

JOHN QUINN: first job after law school at at. 

BEN LEE: No, no. That's the thing is my first job after law school was like, um, I, I worked like at a, um, litigation firm in New York and quit [00:07:00] after a year and then ended up at Legal Aid.

JOHN QUINN: Okay. Um, 

BEN LEE: and so, no, I, I was, I was very happy at Legal Aid and probably should still be there. But then like what ended up happening was, um. I fell in love with a, , a lawyer, another public interest lawyer. We both had public interest jobs and we got married. We had our first child and 

JOHN QUINN: basically somebody had, somebody had to make some money.

BEN LEE: We looked at each other and said, one of us has to get a different job. 

JOHN QUINN: Alright, so is that when you joined at t? 

BEN LEE: No, I ended up joining a law firm. Then say that I could justify going in-house, because in those days, you don't hire anyone in-house. Like unless they've had, you know, , like at least like seven, eight years of experience at that time.

And so it's a very different universe than these days. I, it, it cracks me up seeing, you know, these, these people coming in in house and um, you know, there was a time you would not look at, they wouldn't [00:08:00] look at you. You know, un unless you could kind of show that you've been through the ringer for, for a bit of time, 

JOHN QUINN: you went through a ringer at a law firm and then ended up in-house then, 

BEN LEE: then ended up at at TI.

Although, I have to admit that like my, like folks that IBM were pretty annoyed that I'd gone to at t instead of IBM, , and , at the time I remember. But 

JOHN QUINN: what was your job there at At&t? 

BEN LEE: So I worked at their research lab. Yeah. I was the lawyer for, for at.

Yeah, exactly. It was actually very heavy on the IP work. It was, you know, and it was definitely at a time when, you know, the people who worked, for example, as lawyers in the research lab, um, at at and t were, were all very highly technical and usually had technical degrees to a certain extent. It's funny, like they would often poach.[00:09:00] 

People from the technical side to become a lawyer, um, so that they could kind of get more legal talent internal to the research lab, although that feels like a bygone day at this point. Um, but most of my clients were in the computer science side, so they, you know, I, I fond memories of them because they, I.

They basically kind of worked on the things that I work on now, you know, interestingly enough, but at a more nascent time, you know, the, um, Bjorn Stru, Strub, like was there, you know, the inventor of Sea, Steve Bevin was there, who was, you know, like one of the, the sweetest guy in the universe. He's the guy who created net news, which Usenet, which is.

As far, you know, as far as I'm concerned, is like the predecessor to Reddit, h in terms of like, you know, how it, how it operated at that. It, it's a bygone day of like the early days of like what be, what was [00:10:00] the internet and all. 

JOHN QUINN: And then you went to work at NECA big Japanese company. 

BEN LEE: Exactly. 

JOHN QUINN: But what was, what were some of the highlights of that?

BEN LEE: So one of the fun things, , was I got to work closely with a guy with a, , a person named Vladimir Nik, who was the inventor of the support vector machine. Like, in other words, like, , what eventually ends up becoming like one of the key early developments in machine learning, and then eventually, of course, like we all know and love artificial intelligence and all that.

Um. At NEC, we're doing some interesting work in bioinformatics and machine learning, um, as well as like networking and other things like that, but it just. There's all of these, like nascent development. Like the Jan Koon was, , a young researcher at at t when I was there who was founder of, , WhatsApp.[00:11:00] 

JOHN QUINN: Right? 

BEN LEE: Oh, no, I'm, I'm thinking of the one who's now like, literally runs AI at Meta. Oh. He was a young, you know, researcher who felt very strongly that the. The development of AI should go along the, the direction of neural networks. And he was right. He was absolutely right At that time 

JOHN QUINN: then, after NEC, you joined Google.

Was that your first job up in the Bay area? 

BEN LEE: It was, it was a big deal because I ended up like basically moving the entire family out to California. We, you know, were natively from the New York City area. And so 

JOHN QUINN: what was your job at Google? 

BEN LEE: So I was a senior council and I felt like I started out actually on ip, um, working primarily in the IP side, but then kind of shifted role to managing a bunch of product council.

Um, you know, the, the, the [00:12:00] clients that I was probably the closest to, you know, that our team managed were. At the time, like almost side projects, but um, end up becoming, of course, huge parts of Google, which are Chrome, Android. Um, what became Google Cloud? Um, Google Fiber, like did the whole bunch of fun, fun projects that all had their own kind of issues and interesting issues 

JOHN QUINN: at the time.

Did.

BEN LEE: You know, I think that like we all had a sense that they could, but, but I think like the perspective that folks kind of often miss, especially from the vantage point of like these, this, this time over these longer periods of time is the fact that, um, the competitive situation for each company was just so different.

Like the perspective I think folks have on [00:13:00] Google right now is that, you know, it's this gigantic company and it has so much power and you know, these products are like obviously gonna be so successful, you know, and that, that's kind, that's obviously not the perspective at that time. The perspective at that time like was more like, oh my gosh, like we're about to get crushed by Microsoft at any moment or that we're, you know.

We're, we're trying to catch up to Yahoo or things like that. Yeah. It, it, it's easy to look back on it and say, oh my gosh, of course Chrome was going to be successful. And no, that I don't think was, I, I think like, like, you know. The team really wanted to create an amazing product, but, um, you know, and so much of it is about trying to put out something that you hope will kind of stem the tide, so to speak.

Um, you know, there's a lot to say there underlying it with regards to the tension between, you know, open versus closed systems [00:14:00] and, you know, and like there's so many people who go into like, the creation of any product and we, we tend to kind of like. Focus on like one or two leads who, you know, take in some sense like an enormous amount of the credit for the work of a lot of people.

But there's a lot of people who worked so hard on those projects and they did an amazing job. 

JOHN QUINN: I'm trying to remember, is it when you were at Google, is that when we first met, or was it when you were at Twitter? Remember, 

BEN LEE: I have a very fond memory of us having a, a long, um, just a conversation at lunch in the Twitter cafeteria, but I'm pretty positive.

Our first time we met was probably Google, like, you know, like I. Much like that scene in Star Wars where Obiwan Kenobi talks about like, we fought in the clone wars and like that, like you and I fought in the smartphone wars. Like we, we we know all the way back to the origin of the smartphone wars. That was a, that was a [00:15:00] big deal.

JOHN QUINN: Yeah, it certainly was. So that, how long were you at Google? 

BEN LEE: I was at Google for four.

JOHN QUINN: And what was.

BEN LEE: My position at Twitter was hilarious in the sense of like, you know, I, I, we were only like four attorneys, or five attorney, four attorneys or something like that at the time. So my position was, I. , Ben, please handle all of litigation, all of ip, all of employment, um, any regulatory stuff that comes in and, you know, on Wednesdays, sweep the floors, I think was effectively my role.

It was, , it, it, it just covered a lot at the time. Um, it was a lot. 

JOHN QUINN: Just to go back to, , Google for a second, you know, bill Patri is now with our firm. 

BEN LEE: Oh, you are lucky. Bill is amazing. 

JOHN QUINN: Very lucky. He, he's [00:16:00] an encyclopedia. I'm sure he must have worked with you on that Oracle versus Google case. Oh, to the 

BEN LEE: Yes.

No, exactly what, but the, the irony of it is, you know, bill will remember, but like, you know, and you might remember and stuff like that. But at the time I was, and I. Oracle felt the same way, kind of like more focused on the patent claims than the copyright claims because partly because I like was so dismissive of their position, you know, on the copyright side.

But you know, 

JOHN QUINN: that ended up gonna the US Supreme Court on, , which ended 

BEN LEE: up going to the US Supreme Court. 

JOHN QUINN: Was that fair use? 

BEN LEE: Yeah, you know, it, it's about, you know, when we think about something that's, it's actually something near and dear to every computer scientist, which is, you know, how do you name your, um, your APIs and how do you name like, in essence the namespace of like your modules and, and different [00:17:00] things like that.

Um, you know, effectively, like Oracle's argument was that, you know. The, the way that they had kind of named, in essence, the, the Java package system was something that, you know, they felt was protectable and that they should, I, I'm pretty positive at the time, they didn't think that was their strongest claim.

In fact, they thought their patent claims were far more interesting, you know. But, um, that's ended up being the case. The, the only claim that they took to the, the Supreme Court. And they won. And, , I, I would hope that most computer scientists would think back to that case fondly in terms of what it allows them to do.

But, 

JOHN QUINN: okay. I'm sorry for the diversion, but you're at Twitter and I think you're describing as kind of a very unstructured environment in terms of responsibilities and the legal, 

BEN LEE: um, well, you know, it like early days in any, [00:18:00] um, that was first, . First company I'd ever been in, where, you know, I think we were only a couple hundred people at the start and all that.

So, so it, it's 

JOHN QUINN: how many lawyers when you joined? 

BEN LEE: I'm pretty positive. We weren't more than four or five, I think it, it, it was just, you know, and like we doubled of course, in the next year and then doubled again, you know, in another year after. Um, so it was my exposure to kind of like, you know, startup life in, in Silicon Valley, and, and that's, that's something that, it's a pretty exhilarating experience, but it is pretty crazy in the early days of, of any of these types of companies.

JOHN QUINN: Just to give people an idea of what you were involved in, , you were at Twitter for how many years, and you went from four to roughly how many lawyers by the time you left. 

BEN LEE: I was at Twitter for about five years, I think, and like, like the size of the company when [00:19:00] I joined, as I said, was like, you know, in the hundreds when I left was probably like three or 4,000, and the legal team itself was way over a hundred to 200.

Like it was, you know, um, it was pretty significant by that time, I think. 

JOHN QUINN: What did, what did course. Being in, you know, being in the center of that kind of incredible growth. 

BEN LEE: You learn a lot of things. Um, it's, , oh God, as, as, , Indiana Jones would say, it's, it's not the, the years, it's the mileage and all that.

Like, like you, you learn. You learn so many things in my mind at least of how, like what are the things you should not do? You know, to, to me, like when I like moved from Google to Twitter, like I, I had that in my mind as well as a lot of my [00:20:00] colleagues that, hey, this is like hitting the reset button. There are so many things we wish we had done a little bit differently when we were at Google and now we can kind of do them differently and you know, I feel like I left Twitter with that.

Exact same thing, but now I have like even more list, longer list of things that like you should probably do a little bit differently. You know, like whether it's like, you know, how you're juggling. Like when I joined Twitter, like within the first year I had, I started it with like. Less than like five cases on my docket.

And I like, within like months, I had over a dozen patent cases going simultaneously and other things like that. And so learned very quickly a whole bunch of like things of how not to scale up your litigation efforts or other things like that. 

JOHN QUINN: At the time you left, what, what position? 

BEN LEE: I [00:21:00] was vice President and Deputy General Counsel.

Um, I think is, is 

JOHN QUINN: with responsibility for litigation or a bunch of things. 

BEN LEE: I felt like it was, it was, it was a bunch of things. Yeah. Litigation still reported up to me, but it was just like, it was like. I felt like only this portion percentage of like small percentage was Yeah, I believe, I think like all the product council reporting into me.

So were, so were a whole long list of other folks who, , I even now kind of miss dearly and think about, you know, they've all kind of scattered to the winds now at this point, but, you know, they're all doing the Lord's work in different places. 

JOHN QUINN: Were there any particular cases that you were involved in that Twitter that stand out as highlights 

BEN LEE: there?

There are a whole bunch. Um, but you know, I, I think like the, one of the ones that, that sticks stuck out probably the most is when Twitter sued the US [00:22:00] government. That that was kind of a big deal 

JOHN QUINN: and that was over national security issues or controls that government put in. 

BEN LEE: Exactly it was regarding transparency regarding national security requests.

You know, at the time, like we were pushing very hard for, for greater transparency. The, the way that the national security laws, um, handle these types of things is that they basically mandate that companies that receive national security requests are reporting them in large bands. And so, so point is.

Even if you are a small company, and even if you receive one request, you are obligated to say, I received between zero and 100 or zero and 1000 requests is effectively like the, the mandated like, you know, requirement for purposes you're talking 

JOHN QUINN: about what kinds of requests. 

BEN LEE: Um, so, so national. There are actually a, a wide variety of different types [00:23:00] of national security requests and all that, and 

JOHN QUINN: national security requests.

BEN LEE: Yeah. They come in different flavors, so to speak. And so, you know, they're, they're ones that kind of resemble what looks like warrants and all this is where actually like my criminal experience actually came in handy in some ironic sort of weird sort of way, but, um. Yeah, and they, they bucketize slightly differently, but like you are obligated to kind of report these to the extent that you can even talk about them, which in most cases you're not allowed to talk about them.

And so, so that, that was what we were saying is it's unfair to small companies that receive a tiny number of these to be forced into saying, well, I anywhere between zero and a thousand of these, that, that not is the argument we were trying to make.

JOHN QUINN: Of the tech world. You were at Airbnb, was that at that point another, , early startup, or what was the stage of Airbnb when you joined and what was [00:24:00] your position there? 

BEN LEE: So I was a deputy general counsel, um, responsible for product. And, um, effectively this was at the stage where in essence, it, it the most, the regulatory universe was, was really, really starting to heat up.

Around, um, Airbnb's relationship with, you know, in essence, like, you know, lo localities trying to, to get into, you know, in some sense, like what they felt was a better relationship with regards to these strange things that were happening within their, their jurisdictions and all that. Um.

Exactly. A lot of interactions with local governments as well as just trying to kind of, you know, in some sense get into, I think like a more, a more reasonable place with regards to managing the expectations of folks who are [00:25:00] trying to regulate this area. But like often would kind of come in with like, you know, pretty aggressive expectations about how to regulate the area.

And of course, like what we're talking about is regulating individuals because, you know, these are, are just. Average people who are, you know, want to kind of share their home. And so, so the complexity of kind of managing that, you know, kind of entered into the picture. And at the time there was also, you know, a attempt to kind of push back on some of the more aggressive regulation through using mechanisms, for example, such as Section two 30 even.

But like, it was, , it was an interesting time. Um, I was managing folks. It, it, the company had grown enough that I was managing folks on my team, like who are partly in Europe, partly in Asia, and partly in the us So, so that was, , that was, was that a 

JOHN QUINN: first for you to have team members that you were [00:26:00] managing that were around the world?

BEN LEE: It wasn't a first for me because that was already.

I, I don't know. I think I felt it more because of the fact that like the product implications of what we were doing felt far more international. And I had product counsel, for example, that were in different countries also. Um, I felt like I didn't have product counsel that were outside the country and Twitter.

And so 

JOHN QUINN: any particular, , cases or issues that stand out in your mind?

Mostly this issue of dealing with local regulation of the product. 

BEN LEE: , yeah, I just remember particular localities and all, like one, one particularly interesting locale that was um, challenging, um, was, , was, was China. You know, we had entered China and, and [00:27:00] so I, I had an opportunity to visit Beijing and visit the Airbnb office and, and do a variety of things there.

Um. That was a challenging, that was definitely a very challenging and interesting jurisdiction as these things go. 

JOHN QUINN: Alright, and next. And we're still not to Reddit next year at pla, which is a super successful still company, I believe. 

BEN LEE: Yeah. I joined Plaid when they were about. I think a hundred folk h.

So, so that was, , that was similarly a very fun experience. You know, it resembling more of the early days of Twitter and even earlier, earlier days of Twitter. Um, you know, it's, it's a wonderful company. Like it's. In essence, trying to, in essence, try to hack the, the financial system in terms of, , restoring the rights [00:28:00] of users, um, to their bank data.

It, it's funny, like, again, all of these things feel weirdly connected. Um, although I don't know if I saw those connections until much later, which is when I was at Legal Aid, like, you know, it was kind of, . A well-known thing that like you could get access to folks bank records through going to the bank and the bank as far as they were concerned.

Consider them business records just outright as a general matter. So like 

JOHN QUINN: no privacy, no privacy interest in other words, 

BEN LEE: and no standing to object to a subpoena and other things like that. And you know, 

JOHN QUINN: thinking about it now, that's kind of 

BEN LEE: crazy. Yeah. It, it does, it is crazy. And, you know, and, and the team at Plaid and, and Zach and William, like really, like, you know, they leaned hard into some of the, the things that the CFPB was trying to say about users' data and basically said, you know, look like [00:29:00] this is the user's data and the users should be allowed to kind of share it with FinTech companies and share it in a way that allows them to create.

Amazing financial services on top of that, you know, because the bank, if the banks themselves were innovating with that data and using it to actually create products that, you know, help consumers, that's one thing, but that's not what was happening. And so it's a, it's, they really opened up, like in essence the, the FinTech revolution in a, in a very unique and interesting kind of way.

JOHN QUINN: It's a. 

BEN LEE: They've, they've done some really, really cool things and, you know, and I, I, I miss the gang there. They're really, they're, Zach is amazing. 

JOHN QUINN: And then you joined Reddit. Did you join as general counsel? 

BEN LEE: I did join as general counsel, yeah. Yeah. , it, I was general counsel at Plaid two, but, , the, um, [00:30:00] yeah, no, I, I, Reddit has always been.

Like I kind of alluded to before, Reddit kind of reminds me of the old internet. You know, it's, um, I, I can say it is. For those who haven't like, like actually tried it, it's a, it's a vast online platform with thousands of communities. It's subres where every subject under the sun, pretty much anything, virtually any topic, you know, news, sports, personal advice, hobbies, my, one of my favorites is our slash parenting.

You know, it's, , but, but there's, there's an important aspect to it, which is that, you know, redditors are synonymous, which means that the discussion's a little bit more authentic and a little bit more honest because like, you know what, if I'm gonna be talking about my challenges as a father or as a husband, it, it's not that great to kind of like slap my name on it as a general matter.

And, and, you know, our slash parenting is a [00:31:00] good place where you can, you can share about some of the harder stuff. And actually get some, some great thoughts without, you know, in essence, like having your, your kids say, wait, what, what did you just say about me? 

JOHN QUINN: What, how many channels or, or whatever they call them on Reddit, are there 

BEN LEE: subreddits?

There are, it's a lot. I think it's about, it's somewhere like over a hundred thousand, like active, but you know, it's. What, what's really fascinating is of course, each subreddit is not the, we often say we're not social media, and you know, there's so many important differences and the most important differences that each, each subreddit, each of these, these places where people congregate, is powered and driven by people.

You know, they're the ones who create and moderate their own communities. 

JOHN QUINN: How does.

On X and [00:32:00] before that, Twitter and, , Facebook is a huge issue. How, how do you do that On, on Reddit? 

BEN LEE: Yeah, Reddit. It's funny, it does it in an old fashioned way, but it feels unique nowadays. You know, where we're kind of used to like a central model of moderation. Reddit, right now it, it works off of this layered approach that actually resembles our democracy right now.

It in the sense of like, Hey, you have site-wide content rules that apply to everyone that's akin to federal law. Then you have each community makes its own rules. You know, like, and, and they can be as like very, very specific or, or sometimes very civil, but like the most common rule of every sub subreddit is something I think everyone can kind of.

Relate to, which is be civil. You know, it, it's a very simple rule, but like, so, so they get to decide, each community gets to decide what content they think is appropriate for their [00:33:00] community. Um, and each community has these volunteer moderators that enforce those rules. Um, you can think of them as the state government, but then.

Even in addition to that, and this is the, like the main difference between, um, Reddit and like, for example, Usenet in the old, old days is that we also have voting. Every member of a community can upvote and down vote content. So that voting is important. Basically to Reddit, just as it is to like the United States in terms of like the importance of kind of showing like that the community thinks content is acceptable or, or actually rejects it as a general matter.

JOHN QUINN: There, there must be some, , overarching moderator, , , above the sub.

Of a sub edit aren't doing a very good job, that there's material that's being let through. That's that you don't wanna see. 

BEN LEE: Exactly. I mean, it, it, it's, again, if we think about that federal [00:34:00] system, like who, who are the federal police, so to speak and all that. Yeah, that's right. The federal authorities are Reddit.

Proper, you know, we nickname ourselves, the admins and all that, but so, so the admins are responsible for, you know, if there is, for example, a subreddit with moderators for kind of, you know, getting out of control or anything like that, then that's something that the federal, like the, it's like the federal authorities taking, you know, looking at like what the state authorities are doing.

Just like the state authorities have the authority to look at like what, you know, if, if an individual is, is not behaving the way that they should within their community, they have the right to ban them. But you can kind of see how like each of each of the folks at the different layers have a shared responsibility for content moderation.

JOHN QUINN: Are you using AI very much in this process? 

BEN LEE: So this is an interesting piece of this, which is that, you know, it [00:35:00] depends on what you describe as ai and the, the answer is yes, an absolute yes, but like, um, you know, when we think about like, like I. The difference, for example, between, you know what, what I would kind of characterize as just general machine learning, we've been using that for a long time and frankly, most tech companies have been using that like all throughout their stack in various ways.

Like, you know, one of the earliest mechanisms for us is, is looking for. It's a huge amount of the content moderation process, and a lot of that falls on, on the central organization, the federal or part of the organization. You know, we've been using, you know, advanced machine learning techniques there for quite a long time, or whether looking at things like vote manipulation or other things like that.

Um, the newer manifestations of, you know, using deep learning in the context of lang large language models. [00:36:00] Yes, absolutely. That's something that, you know, we have been, you know, successfully using in various aspects of it, and it's, it's one of the more exciting aspects of artificial intelligence is, is kind of seeing the use of the technology, you know, in all sorts of parts of business that, you know, we haven't really thought about up until this point.

JOHN QUINN: To.

BEN LEE: Yeah, well, you know, section two 30 is of course something we've, as Reddit has chimed in many times, you know, in Congress and in amicus briefs before the Supreme Court. Um, you know, actually what's been really amazing is in the net choice case. I, I don't know whether you saw it, but, , our communities are subreddits actually chimed in with their own [00:37:00] amicus briefs.

These were the moderators of r slash law and r slash scotus. Um, yeah, I, you know, the, the content moderation model that we have is one that is effectively enabled by what it, it's, it's basically what we do is possible because of section two 30 I. The section two 30 was born out of the old Prodigy case and the old copy serve case.

And you know, the prior generation of platforms that actually resemble Reddit more than they resemble any of the modern platforms. 

JOHN QUINN: For, for those who don't know, , section two 30 refers to the law, which provides that platforms are generally not gonna be responsible or liable for user generated content.

BEN LEE: Yeah. And Section two 30 was drafted in this really elegant way, um, that, you know, it frankly, most intermediary protections in, , across other jurisdictions haven't been drafted in this way. [00:38:00] Like it's this elegant way to protect not just providers of these services, services, but users, you know, users of these services as well.

I mean, it says no provider or user. Of an interactive computer service, um, shall be treated as the publisher speaker of information provided by someone else and Section two 30, like in other words, you know, like, how is, how I was saying before, how like they have volunteer moderators who are making a large amount of the content moderation decisions for their community.

Section two 30 protects their decisions. It protects the decisions of. Our own users. As much as it protects Reddit decisions, it protects the decisions of our volunteer moderators. It protects the users who are voting up and down content, and so it protects these everyday decisions that where folks are just curating the content of their communities.

JOHN QUINN: Yeah. So you recently were.[00:39:00] 

To some degree pre IPO process, at least at Twitter and maybe, , some of the other companies you've been at. What's that like? Um, taking a company public, you know, getting everything in order, creating the documents that are necessary to be a public company and then, , having.

BEN LEE: Interesting process. I, I, I actually, um, I, I do think that for anyone who's worked at a company, it, the process itself is a good process and it's one that, that they should, in some sense. Embrace as a part of it because it's it the formalisms you go through to make a company pro, like a company public like can [00:40:00] in the best of cases.

And you know, even in the worst of cases should make the company better. It should make you better and it should make like your team better and your management team better. You know, it, it can feel very like archaic and mechanical at times, but, but actually, like, so much of it makes sense in terms of like what you're trying to do, in terms of, of having the company grow up.

Um. I, I think that the, the interesting point for, for the Reddit IPO was of course the timing in the sense of, you know, we had announced our, our, um. Our submission process earlier and kind of expected and anticipated to kind of go public, um, within that first year. And of course, it didn't happen that way.

So like we were in, what is the equivalent of the, , the quiet period for, for a very long time, much, much longer than is normal in this kind of context. [00:41:00] Um, but, but the irony of it. It is an opportunity for the team to kind of, in some sense go through the maturity of having to kind of talk about what the company had did in a quarter I.

Think about like, how would we present what you know we're doing as a company on a regular basis. And, and in essence kind of explain ourselves in a way that, you know, reflects like how companies, you know, mature companies in the public markets operate. And then that's like a useful exercise. Um, you know, it's, it's something that I think if you're looking at it from vantage point.

The different ways in which you as a company can operate, you know, more effectively, more efficiently together. I, I think it can be a very good maturing process. 

JOHN QUINN: That's an interesting perspective that it, it causes, , the process [00:42:00] itself causes self-improvement. Um, how many years has. You job after you graduated

your career? How many years have we covered? 

BEN LEE: Oh good. That is a good question. So we are. We're going into the mid nineties at that point, so, so this is, yeah, it's been a while. 

JOHN QUINN: Yeah. 30 years. 30 years. And your wife, , is she still a 

BEN LEE: lawyer? Well, she's still a lawyer, but, but she, she's not practicing. Although, you know, anytime the, the, especially when the kids were younger, they were, would get out of, you know, hand or anything like that.

She'd keep threatening to go back to work so. And she, you know, just for the record is so much better lawyer than I am. Well, big statement. 

JOHN QUINN: , how many kids do, do you have and how old are they now and what are they [00:43:00] doing? 

BEN LEE: Well, I have three kids. They're all in their twenties now, which, . You know, you just blink a couple of times and you know, suddenly they're, well, suddenly they're old enough to go to law school.

Um, which, , luckily, like, well, I shouldn't say that. The last time I said something where I was making fun of people who went to law school or, or just made fun of my, my wife, like, took me aside and said, you do know what you do for a living. The older two never seemed at all interested in the youngest may actually consider going to law school, but um.

He's, , he's, , about to graduate from UCSB, but the, , the older two are doing, like the older two are doing all sorts of fun stuff. My my second oldest is working, um, at Wells Fargo, and the other is, is very into programming in particular, [00:44:00] like programming, , games and things like that. And so projects.

JOHN QUINN: It's like being an in-house lawyer in the tech world. Maybe wanna be in-house lawyers in the tech world and be successful. , what would you say are some of the key characteristics or themes, things you've learned working across all these different platforms and companies, um, that pertain to success and being a, a lawyer in a.

BEN LEE: It's a, it's a wonderful question. I, I feel like, like there is this big transition that happens like when you're working, for example, like, um, as a junior attorney, kind of like figuring out what your role is, you know, whether it's at a law firm or whether it's at Legal aid or other places like that. The transition to like working at a company.

I, I, I [00:45:00] definitely encourage folks to consider roles at companies and other places like that. Um, but I think that like, like what, what? For me makes it like, you know, something that's both challenging as well as fulfilling is that feeling of it. It basically encompasses two so many different parts of your brain with regards to getting something actually done.

Um, how would, how would I best characterize it? I think like. A good example to me is, is a little advice I gave to a Google attorney who reported to me, who had kind of advised on a product launch and, you know, his, his, he, he was, he seemed pretty happy about this particular product launch because he managed to kill it.

, because it, he'd like identified like that it posed a, like a significant legal risk [00:46:00] and then ended up, you know, creating a situation where they couldn't move forward with it. And, you know, I took him aside and said, actually, so I. In, in the larger context of providing good legal advice, you have done your job.

And a lot of times, like in a lot of roles, that is our job, is just nothing more than to provide advice. Um, but you do have to understand you are part of the team. I. The part of the team. And what is the team's job? The team's job is to launch very, very cool products. You know, so in some sense, like your success is built not out of like the fact that you gave great advice and were a great lawyer.

Your success is. It, it's not that like you are not successful if you kill the team's launch. Like what you do is success is you've turned a launch that has massive legal risk into one that [00:47:00] is, has very manageable legal risk. That's success. You know, and so, and that's, that's not always the perspective I think, especially if someone comes straight from a law firm.

JOHN QUINN: Yeah.

Is risk free or very few things are gonna be risk free and just pointing out risks isn't success in the job. You're not really maximizing your contribution if you're just pointing out risks. 

BEN LEE: Yeah, exactly. As a junior lawyer like, like I remember like it just, you know, in some sense you're rewarded for identifying like.

The full panoply of risks. You know, the, like being thorough, like don't leave a stone unturned. But, but then when you're absorbing it, like what you, as you get more mature as a lawyer, what you're able to do is synthesize that down to these are the important risks. These I'm not even going to pay attention to because they're, they're [00:48:00] practically de minimis to what these are over here, and that's.

JOHN QUINN: Ben has conversation. Thank you very much for joining us. I think everybody listening can get a sense of what a thoughtful, curious person Ben is, how he.

Point, given all the different jobs he has, he's, I'm sure he's in the sense jack of all trades, but that doesn't really, , acknowledge the levels of expertise he's gotten in so many different areas of law practice. So, , it's been a pleasure speaking with you, Ben. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

John. This has been Ben Lee, general Counsel of Reddit. This is John Quinn and this has been law Disrupted.

Thank you for listening to Law Disrupted with me, John Quinn. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and review on [00:49:00] your chosen podcast app to stay up to date with the latest episodes. You can sign up for email alerts at our website, law Hype Disruptive fm, or follow me on X at JB Q Law.

Or at Quin Emanuel. Thank you for tuning in.