Tesla appoints third new legal leader

Tesla appoints third new legal leader

Bill Berry takes over as acting head of legal from David Searle, compliance chief

The company has appointed its director of compliance as acting head of legal and corporate secretary, the third person to lead Tesla's legal department within the past two years.

Tesla's deputy general counsel and head of compliance, David Searle, joined the company last February after almost two years working at Walmart, where he was vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer.

According to Bloomberg Law, Searle updated his LinkedIn profile last week to reflect his new titles, which indicates that he assumed the role of acting director of legal last October. As Tesla's legal leader, he replaces William Berry, formerly of Google's in-house team, who according to his LinkedIn page led Tesla's legal team for several months last year as vice president of legal and left the company in December.

Mr. Berry replaced acting general counsel and corporate secretary Alan Prescott who left Tesla last April after less than 18 months in the role to become chief legal officer of Luminar, a Peter Thiel-funded company that develops laser sensor technology for autonomous vehicles.

He spent most of his career as a federal prosecutor in Houston before moving to Walmart's hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas to take up his position at the multinational retailer. Previously, he served for four-and-a-half years as chief compliance officer and deputy general counsel at Bristow Group, an aviation company that primarily serves the offshore energy sector, and he served earlier as director of compliance at chemicals distributor Nexeo Solutions and as audit and investigations counsel at the energy tech company Baker Hughes. He worked as an associate at Baker Botts prior to joining the firm.

Tesla moved its headquarters to Austin last December after Elon Musk clashed with officials in the company's previous home state of California over restrictions that stopped production at the factory during the pandemic. According to Searle's LinkedIn profile, he is once again based in Texas.

Searle is Tesla's sixth legal chief in the last decade. Between December 2018 and December 2019, the company lost three general counsels, Todd Maron, Dane Butswinkas and Jonathan Chang. A former divorce lawyer of Musk, Marcon left the company at the end of 2018 after serving as its top lawyer for over four years. However, Butswinkas, a partner at Williams & Connolly, held the role for just two months, while Chang moved to SambaNova, a developer of AI hardware.

A request for comment was not responded to by Tesla.