By the time Hewlett-Packard Company’s $8.8 billion write-down of Autonomy was announced in November, a number of the in-house lawyers who had worked on the ill-fated dealdenounced by pundits as HP’s worst everwere already gone. Even before then, plenty of the company’s lawyers had reason to head for the exits.
In the past six years, HP employees have weathered debacles including the fallout from the pretexting scandal, former CEO Mark Hurd’s departure after allegations of sexual harassment, and former CEO Leo Apotheker’s brief and rocky tenure. Those highly public pratfalls have left the legal department that new general counsel John Schultz inherited last April tired and frustrated, according to interviews with a dozen former HP lawyers.
