Meet Microsoft GC Brad Smith: He Put ‘a Smiling Face on an Aggressive Strategy’
Even when Microsoft was facing antitrust sanctions from the European Union, the company’s chief lawyer kept his sense of humor.
Legal counsel Brad Smith joked with Europe’s antitrust lawyer about the way negotiations were like the movie Fatal Attraction, according to the Seattle Times blog Microsoft Pri0. In the movie, Alex Forrest appeared to be dead, only to rise again with her knife. Similarly, just when Microsoft was nearing agreement, someone else would come forward with objections.
Thomas Vinje, a lawyer who has represented several U.S. tech firms in Brussels that compete with Microsoft, told the Seattle Times that Smith was tough despite any levity. “Brad put a smiling face on an aggressive strategy,” he said.
Smith took over as Microsoft’s general counsel in 2002. He grew up in Wisconsin and married his wife, general counsel at SonoSite, while they were in law school at Columbia, the story says.
After graduating law school, he went to Covington & Burling, where he told the hiring partner he would not take the job unless he got a computer. Smith got his wish. He was the first lawyer at the law firm to have a PC, the story says.
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