Meet the lawyer who beat Elon Musk — twice

Watching 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.”

Meet the lawyer who beat Elon Musk — twice

Walk softly and carry a Fender Telecaster.

Walk softly and carry a Fender Telecaster.

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?

If you have a witness who’s a formidable personality, who you know is going to be very smart, you know has the capacity to see around corners, and you know who has the ability to be charming, if you have a witness like that, your task is harder than it would otherwise be. And the crucial part of being ready for an examination like that is, this probably won’t surprise you, is just massive preparation. You have to know every document that’s relevant to what this witness may have to say and you’ve got to know it like that [snaps fingers]. You’ve got to have it at your fingertips. You have to because there’s not time in the moment to react.

It’s also really important to never take the bait, never get into a fighting match, never be pushed off of your objective by the force of personality that’s in the witness box. That doesn’t mean that you should just stick to a script, and I have seen lawyers stick to a script particularly in high-profile examinations, and you miss tremendous opportunities if you do that, because there’s always a surprise or two or three in an examination. And I think what is often the best moments of a cross-examination are when a little rabbit runs across the road and you know to go chase it down. But you’ve got to have the massive preparation to know when to go and chase down leads as they come up, which they will do right in the middle of the examination, and then come back to your project.

I’m curious about what you mean when you say you have these moments of a rabbit running across the road.

There’s this adage that particularly on cross-examination, a lawyer should never ask a question to which he or she doesn’t know the answer, and that’s usually good advice, but sometimes it’s good to take a shot, particularly if the answer can’t harm you.

I had a case in which a relevant question was whether someone had information that they weren’t supposed to by virtue of a nondisclosure agreement. This was a very important case that led to some really important case law. And watching the witness on direct [examination], there was something about the way she was answering questions that caused me to believe she had more information. So when I got to the podium, I asked questions that projected confidence that she had the information that she wasn’t supposed to have. And at first, she resisted, but I persisted, and eventually she thought I had it and she just gave the answer up. And it was extremely interesting and it led to a whole line of questioning about how the information was obtained, how relevant it was to the corporate activity at issue, and it ultimately fed very much into the result, which was a huge win for a client.

So a lot of times, it has to do with trying to pick up cues with the way a witness is answering your questions or your adversary’s questions, altering the tone of questioning so as to convey either curiosity or confidence in the proposition that you’re asking about. Every extensive cross-examination will yield a surprise or two.

One of the things that I’ve noticed, sitting through a handful of trials, is that the lawyer that can present a coherent timeline and just order events in the jury’s head seems to be the lawyer who really wins. How you go about ordering a timeline that sticks?

I agree with you. Nearly in every case, someone comes up with the idea of approaching the briefing or the presentation in a nonchronological way for some good, substantial reason having to do with emphasis of themes, and nearly always it’s a mistake. It is remarkable just how much easier it is to understand a succession of facts when they’re presented in chronological order. And in the Musk case we just tried, of course, the sequence of events was exceedingly important in all sorts of different ways.

Putting things in chronological order in a way that will ring true to me or you or whoever happens to be sitting in the jury boxes, it’s what distinguishes a winner from a loser, I think, in a case.

How do you think about what’s going on legally for your client versus other considerations such as reputational damage?

Every case has a lot of different things going on. And most litigation that’s filed is filed with some nonlegal but commercial objective behind it, and most lawsuits can be and most are resolved long before they get to a trial. Some situations have that in a much more exaggerated way. As a lawyer, what is most important is to remember that it’s not about you and it’s not always about the law or the courtroom. It’s about your client and it’s about your adversary’s client and what they’re trying to achieve and how they’re trying to achieve it.

A mistake is to view every case solely through a legal lens.