Law, disrupted
Law, disrupted is a podcast that dives into the legal issues emerging from cutting-edge and innovative subjects such as SPACs, NFTs, litigation finance, ransomware, streaming, and much, much more! Your host is John B. Quinn, founder and chairman of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, a 900+ attorney business litigation firm with 29 offices around the globe, each devoted solely to business litigation. John is regarded as one of the top trial lawyers in the world, who, along with his partners, has built an institution that has consistently been listed among the “Most Feared” litigation firms in the world (BTI Consulting Group), and was called a “global litigation powerhouse” by The Wall Street Journal. In his podcast, John is joined by industry professionals as they examine and debate legal issues concerning the newest technologies, innovations, and current events—and ask what’s next?
Law, disrupted
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
