GoKawiilWatching Elon Musk fulminate at Bill Savitt during Musk v. Altman — the case in which Musk sued Sam Altman and OpenAI instead of seeing a therapist about his AI failures — was a bit like watching a toddler have a temper tantrum at his nursery school teacher. Savitt’s questions were “designed to trick me,” Musk said. He also told Savitt at one point, “You mostly do unfair questions.”
Savitt, who has the approximate demeanor of a handsome Droopy Dog, gently told Musk, “I am trying to put the questions as fairly as I can. I am doing my best.”
I’ve seen a number of styles of cross-examination. Savitt’s was mild-mannered and soft-spoken; his questions were mostly easy to answer, sometimes simply asking Musk to restate things he’d said in direct examination earlier that day. That Musk mysteriously could no longer remember what he’d happily told his own lawyer went a long way toward establishing Musk as an unreliable narrator from the jump — since Musk was the first witness on the stand.
“If you read the Wall Street Journal, you might as well be looking at Bill Savitt’s daily calendar.”
Savitt’s handled a number of important cases — representing Coinbase in its fight against the Securities and Exchange Commission, KKR in the (important to merger and acquisition nerds) Corwin v. KKR Financial, and Sotheby’s in its defense of a poison pill. “If you read the Wall Street Journal, you might as well be looking at Bill Savitt’s daily calendar,” wrote legal publisher Lawdragon in 2015. But his run-ins with Musk have put him on the map for a wider audience.
While Savitt had some business with Tesla in the past — Savitt’s firm, Wachtell, Lipton, represented Tesla in its SolarCity acquisition and resulting litigation — he hadn’t dealt directly with Musk, he told me. But when Musk tried to back out of his agreement to buy Twitter, Savitt represented Twitter. He won. And with Musk v. Altman, he’s won again.
Savitt says he hasn’t taken on any new cases opposing Musk or his enterprises since the trial ended. His practice, which has been “pretty busy for a long time,” has had a number of inquiries about cases, but it’s hard to know how much Musk v. Altman influences that. Still, given the number of lawsuits Musk embroils himself in, it’s not difficult to imagine that Savitt could stay pretty busy as the go-to Musk legal nemesis.
I chatted with Savitt about how he prepares for a case, a process that, in Musk v. Altman, involved playing a Fender Telecaster through a Cube amp; how he thinks about the nonlegal repercussions of lawsuits; and the questions he has about the future of AI in law. Because Musk is appealing the jury’s verdict in Musk v. Altman, Savitt declined to discuss specifics of the case — but I suspect, given his success so far, he may have the blueprint for beating Musk.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Having seen a couple of Musk appearances in the courtroom, I know he can be a particularly difficult witness to cross-examine. How do you prepare for that kind of cross-examination, and how do you think about what your goals are when you’re working with Musk or a witness like him?
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