Zoom General Counsel Departs as Company Shuffles Legal Staff
Zoom Video Communications Inc., a technology company known for its video conferencing platform, has reorganized its in-house law department.
Jeffrey True, hired by Zoom as general counsel in 2020 from Palo Alto Networks Inc., recently left the company, which has tapped two other lawyers it recruited the same year as True to fill key new roles, said a source briefed on the matter.
Josh Parecki, head of trust and safety at Zoom, is also now chief compliance and ethics officer. Lynn Haaland, most recently a deputy general counsel and chief privacy, compliance, and ethics officer for Zoom, has been named chief privacy officer and deputy general counsel for product and artificial intelligence. The promotions of Haaland and Parecki—who collectively spent two decades working for the US Department of Justice—occurred this past September.
True, who didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, appears to have left Zoom around that time. True’s LinkedIn profile indicates September was his last month at the company. Archived internet records show that Zoom removed True from the leadership page of its website that same month. True, who has worked at several companies during a 25-year legal career, was responsible for leading Zoom’s legal team and implementing various oversight and hiring initiatives.
Aparna Bawa, chief operating officer for Zoom since she was elevated to that job in 2020 after serving as the company’s chief legal officer, didn’t respond to a request for comment about the personnel changes.
In October, Zoom agreed to a $150 million settlement in a proposed shareholder class action lawsuit filed in 2020 over alleged security flaws in the company’s encryption software. Cooley took the lead representing Zoom in that litigation. Cooley had a role on roughly 40% of cases involving Zoom in US federal courts within the past five years, according to Bloomberg Law data.
The company, whose user base exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, has come under scrutiny in recent months from consumer advocates alarmed by the company’s decision to update its terms of service, a move that allowed Zoom to tap user data to train new artificial intelligence tools.
Zoom has sought to expand its product portfolio as the company’s central video conferencing software is challenged by rival offerings. Zoom announced earlier this year it would slash about 1,300 jobs—roughly 15% of its workforce—in an effort to adapt to a period of slower growth post-pandemic.
The legal and compliance team wasn’t spared in the cutbacks with at least a half-dozen individuals being affected, according to an analysis of online Zoom alumni networks. In the months after its mass layoff disclosure the San Jose, Calif.-based company saw two deputy general counsel depart its ranks.
Theodore “Ted” Gizewski, a deputy general counsel hired by Zoom in 2020 after he served as vice president of product legal at Salesforce.com Inc., left over the summer to become head of legal and compliance for US data security at TikTok Inc. Adam Avrunin, another Zoom deputy general counsel recruited three years ago from Splunk Inc., was announced in September as the new general counsel for Stability AI Ltd., a startup coping with a string of executive exits.
Avrunin, however, and Stability AI’s new chief people officer left the artificial intelligence outfit in October, according to report by Bloomberg News.
