When Michael Holston became head of Hewlett-Packard Company’s legal department in 2007, the Silicon Valley icon wasn’t in good shape. Controversial CEO Carly Fiorina had been ousted two years earlier, and a source inside the company had been leaking the content of boardroom meetings to reporters. The hunt for that leak ultimately turned into a spying scandal that caused former general counsel Ann Baskins to resign, after she was accused of letting private investigators get access to phone records of reporters and HP employees.
Enter Holston. He’d worked for a decade as outside counsel to HP at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, and had already helped steer the company through difficult congressional hearings on what was euphemistically termed the “pretexting” issue. A former prosecutor with a linebacker build and a buttoned-down, straight-shooter image, Holston was well positioned to be the unsullied general counsel that the tech giant needed. So it wasn’t surprising that big changes were in store.
