Gary Zhou 
Tesla is taking an interesting approach with its Legal Department by building a “full-scale internal litigation and trial team,” according to General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for the automaker, Brandon Ehrhart.
Tesla’s Legal team has come to shape over the past few years after CEO Elon Musk said in mid-2022 that the company would build a “hardcore litigation department” that would be responsible for initiating and executing lawsuits.
The Tesla Litigation team took shape shortly after Musk’s Tweet, as the automaker hired Adam Mehes, as well as Ehrhart after the initial plans for the legal department were announced.
Tesla is rounding out its Legal team with a new internal litigation and trial team, according to a LinkedIn post from Ehrhart, who joined Tesla in February.
“Tesla Legal is building something unique: a full-scale internal litigation and trial team that can handle all aspects of litigation and trial work, including briefings, hearings, discover, depositions and trials, completely in-house,” he writes.
It is an interesting approach to the legal side of things. As many Tesla supporters have pushed for a Public Relations team to be erected to handle things like false reports and stories harmful to the automaker’s image, Tesla appears to be taking direct ramifications against outlets who have published stories that are untrue.
The internal team is announced at an interesting time, too. This past weekend, Tesla reported its quarterly production and delivery figures, and it was not met with fairness by all outlets. Despite Tesla beating FactSet consensus figures of 420,000 deliveries for the quarter, outlets have attempted to spin the beat into a negative story.
This is far from the first time Tesla has had to deal with negativity in the media, as Musk mentioned in an interview last year.
“Tesla’s just under a relentless attack from so many,” Musk said. “So I think we just have to have like a strong litigation group that fights back, essentially. A lot of really talented lawyers have sent in their resumes, and we’re actually going through that.”
