Home » Resources » In-House Pro Bono in the News » Bradford L. Smith, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Corporation, is New Corporate Pro Bono (CPBO) Advisory Board Co-Chair

Bradford L. Smith, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Corporation, is New Corporate Pro Bono (CPBO) Advisory Board Co-Chair

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Corporate Pro Bono (CPBO), a joint partnership of the Pro Bono Institute and the Association of Corporate Counsel, is pleased to announce that Bradford L. Smith, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Corporation, will join the CPBO Advisory Board, effective March 3, 2007. Mr. Smith will co-chair the Advisory Board with Laura Stein, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of the Clorox Company.

Mr. Smith succeeds Thomas A. Gottschalk, Executive Vice President, Law & Public Policy, of General Motors, who helped to shepherd the growth of in-house pro bono and the development of the Corporate Pro Bono Challenge℠ during his tenure as co-chair of the CPBO Advisory Board. Under his leadership, the Corporate Pro Bono Challenge℠ received more than fifty signatories in its inaugural year. As a representative of General Motors, Mr. Gottschalk currently serves on the boards of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the National Center for State Courts, Transparency International-USA, and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. Mr. Gottschalk is a member of the District of Columbia, Michigan, and Illinois Bars and has been admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts. Mr. Gottschalk has been a trustee at Earlham College since 1972 and was chairman from 1985 to 1991. He has also served on the board of trustees of American University in Washington, D.C., since 1995 and was elected vice chair in 2005. The Pro Bono Institute wishes to express its gratitude to Mr. Gottschalk for his extraordinary leadership.

Mr. Smith graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, where he received the Class of 1901 Medal, the Dewitt Clinton Poole Memorial Prize, and the Harold Willis Dodds Achievement Award, the highest award given to a graduating senior at commencement. He was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar at the Columbia University School of Law, where he received the David M. Berger Memorial Award. He also studied international law and economics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He has written numerous articles regarding international intellectual property and electronic commerce issues, and has served as a lecturer at the Hague Academy of International Law.

Brad Smith leads Microsoft’s Department of Legal and Corporate Affairs group, which is responsible for all legal work and for government, industry, and community affairs activities. Mr. Smith has played a leading role at Microsoft on intellectual property, competition law, and other Internet legal and public policy issues. He is the company’s Chief Compliance Officer and is responsible for Microsoft’s work to implement the antitrust consent decree established in 2001 with the Department of Justice and state Attorneys General. Before joining Microsoft, he was a partner at Covington & Burling, having worked in the firm’s Washington, D.C., and London offices, and represented a number of companies in the computing industry.

Mr. Smith’s commitment to pro bono is long-standing, beginning before he became a lawyer. The topic of his senior thesis was international refugee law. He volunteered with the UN High Commission on Refugees, and, as a law student, he volunteered with the organization now known as Human Rights First. Mr. Smith continued his pro bono practice while at Covington & Burling, a firm with a wonderful pro bono tradition. Furthermore, Microsoft helped to create the Volunteer Advocates for Immigrant Justice program (VAIJ) through which their legal staff, along with volunteers from many law firms in the Seattle area, provide pro bono assistance to detained immigrants seeking asylum or other forms of relief before the immigration courts. See www.vaij.org for more info.

CPBO is a global pro bono partnership project of the Association of Corporate Counsel and the Pro Bono Institute. Through on-line services (www.cpbo.org), technical assistance to the in-house community, and educational outreach, CPBO seeks to encourage and support the participation of in-house counsel in pro bono legal services. For more information on CPBO, please visit us at www.cpbo.org, or contact Eve Runyon, CPBO director, at erunyon@probonoinst.org.

 

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A global partnership project of the Pro Bono Institute and the Association of Corporate Counsel
www.cpbo.org