[Wikimedia-l] Announcement: New Legal Counsel

[Philippe Beaudette]

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 1:33 PM, Philippe Beaudette
<philippe at wikimedia.org>wrote:

> As for the day to day work of the GC and LC.... I'll let one of them
> answer that.  I'm not an expert in it.



Following up on my committment yesterday to find an answer to Mike's
questions, Geoff provided the below (which I'm posting, since he's
technically on holiday):

>From a staffing perspective,
Geoff<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geoffbrigham>serves as the
General Counsel with general strategic and oversight
responsibilities as well as executive duties.  He is responsible for all
legal and community advocacy issues for the Wikimedia Foundation.   He
serves as an advisor to the Board of Trustees and Executive Director.  He
is in charge of effective management of the LCA team, ensuring a smooth
operation that responds to priority projects timely and appropriately.
This coming year, he expects to spend about 40% of his time on community
advocacy affairs and about 60% on legal matters. Each member of his team is
responsible for certain portfolios, and Geoff works closely with his team
on high priority, significant projects within those portfolios.  Kelly, for
example, handles contracts (about 200+ a year), FDC, global outreach,
fundraising, non-profit corporate governance, HR, and privacy issues (among
other issues) in addition to her duties as Deputy General Counsel. Michelle
addresses trademark authorizations (about 200+ a year), copyright,
litigation, the legal intern program, hundreds of community inquiries, and
content issues (about 100+ takedown demands a year that we challenge
successfully 95% of the time).   As you know, Philippe and Maggie manage a
wide variety of community projects and questions that fall under LCA.
Stephen will report to Kelly, who is working on a number of tough,
sophisticated goals, and also will help out Michelle and Philippe as
needed.  We will shortly post a more detailed list of responsibilities for
each team member.  That said, we are a small team for the fifth largest
website in the world, so we are all flexible, supporting each other with
their workload, responsibilities, and priorities.


___________________
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

415-839-6885, x 6643

philippe at wikimedia.org