Former DOJ employees make up both its in-house team and members of outside counsel firms it employs. The company has hired three former DOJ officials into regulatory roles since May 2022, and one before that in 2021, according to public information including social media profiles. Google also uses four different outside counsel firms loaded with nearly 20 former DOJ officials, many of whom worked in the antitrust division at various times.

Such hiring for its internal regulatory team is a reflection of the intense scrutiny Google is facing from governments around the world. It can be a signal that a company anticipates dealing with regulatory challenges in years to come, even if it doesn’t know exactly what form it’ll take yet, according to two former government officials.

“When companies find themselves under intense scrutiny from regulatory authorities, antitrust law or otherwise, they make moves like this,” said Bill Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission chair who now teaches antitrust law at George Washington University.

Google now faces two antitrust challenges from the DOJ, both to its search and ad tech businesses, and additional challenges from a slew of state attorneys general. Regulators around the world, including in Europe and Australia, have also presented policy and enforcement hurdles.

Google’s hiring is not surprising for a company under such a microscope, according to Doug Melamed, a former acting assistant attorney general at the DOJ antitrust division who’s now a scholar-in-residence at Stanford Law School.

The company had already been fighting one complex antitrust case that would likely require a team of 10 to 15 lawyers alone, according to Melamed, when the department brought its second antitrust challenge against the company earlier this year.

“They don’t have the capacity to handle a case like that just sitting idle,” Melamed said. “They’ve got to now think about well, what outside lawyers are available that have to have the time and expertise to handle this case? And then, do I have the in-house capability to support it and supervise it?”

The added threat of new legislation targeting Google’s business, and that of other tech firms, looms. In the near term, it appears that a massive lobbying campaign by the industry has successfully delayed the most disruptive reforms. But the possibility of renewed energy around that legislation still hangs over the industry, and a company like Google “can take nothing for granted now,” Kovacic said, adding that’s likely a reason for the company to build out its regulatory forces.

“New entrants and new innovations are driving competition and delivering value for America’s consumers, publishers, and merchants,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement for this story. “We’re proud of our services and we look forward to making our case in court.”

A recent event shows what can happen when that trust is broken. The DOJ last month accused Google of destroying chat messages it should have kept under a litigation hold related to the investigation. The DOJ made the accusation in a legal filing after Epic Games raised the concern in its own antitrust litigation against Google.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement at the time of the DOJ’s filing that they “strongly refute the DOJ’s claims.”

Google also works with outside counsel firms on its antitrust cases, including Axinn, Freshfields, Ropes & Gray and Wilson Sonsini, based on reports, statements and legal filings. Those firms collectively have around 20 former DOJ employees on their staff, many of them working in antitrust. Though these attorneys may not all work on Google matters, the firms themselves often tout the benefit of former government officials in bringing a helpful perspective to clients.

For example, Freshfields says on its website that its “deep bench of former DOJ and FTC trial attorneys gives us unique insight into how the enforcement agencies approach enforcement in general and litigation in particular.”

Kovacic said agency experience is something companies look for in hiring outside firms.

“In deciding who to retain, what law firm to retain or what economic consultancy to retain, they would place a lot of weight on how many former government officials are in those firms,” Kovacic said.

Freshfields attorneys Julie Elmer and Eric Mahr have led Google’s defense against an advertising technology monopolization case brought by a group of states led by Texas, The New York Times reported in 2021. And Bloomberg Law reported this year that Mahr will also lead its defense in the ad tech case brought by the DOJ.

Mahr was director of litigation for the DOJ antitrust division from 2015 to 2017, according to the Freshfields site, and Elmer worked as a trial attorney in the antitrust division from 2015 to 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Revolving-door hiring goes both ways between the public and private sectors, with government officials often working for previous employers or clients who become relevant in their work. For example, DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter previously worked for clients including Microsoft and Yelp which have complained of Google’s allegedly anticompetitive behavior.

Ultimately, however, Kanter was cleared to work on cases and investigations involving Google, despite the company’s suggestion that his past work should cast doubt on his ability to be fair in such matters.

The DOJ and Wilson Sonsini declined to comment. The three other firms mentioned did not immediately provide a comment for this story.

For example, the DOJ’s website says that former employees can’t represent someone before the government on an issue involving parties they “personally and substantially” worked on during their time in government. For two years after leaving the department, a former employee also cannot represent anyone before the government in a matter involving parties they know “was pending under his official responsibility for the last year of government service and in which the U.S. is a party or has a substantial interest.”

And for one year after leaving the agency, former senior employees cannot represent someone before the agency “with the intent to influence” the DOJ on a pending matter or one in which it has an interest.

Personal and substantial work on a matter within government doesn’t depend on the length of time devoted to it, but the role a person played in potentially influencing the outcome or direction, according to Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) who previously advised government officials on ethics at agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department.

But even if a former government official can’t work on a specific matter they were privy to during their earlier employment, their insight might still be useful to a company.

“You can read about it, but when you’re actually part of dealing with these cases, you know that there are certain factors that are going to either act as mitigating or … that are going to more favorably incline you to bring a case,” Canter said. “It’s just your general knowledge and experience.”

When companies hire former government officials, they may also have the idea that those employees will be viewed more favorably by the current regime.

“Maybe there’s just this general impression that they’re trying to surround themselves with what will be perceived by their former colleagues as the good guys,” Canter hypothesized.

Some might argue that experience could be beneficial to the government in some cases, Canter noted. A former government employee might have a deeper understanding of the importance of compliance or providing certain information to officials, for example, having seen up close what could be at stake if they don’t.

Hauser said it’s unlikely DOJ leadership, especially Kanter, who has made a point to bring more aggressive cases in the tech space and overall, would be overly swayed to view things Google’s way in ongoing matters. But, he said, the impact of former DOJ staff employed by Google could be more influential in an emerging issue, where there’s an opportunity to leave a first impression on senior leadership about it.

The degree of this kind of influence may be relatively small on the level of an individual case, Hauser said, but for a company under such a high degree of regulatory scrutiny, it could add up.

“You’re talking about billions and billions of dollars of potential implications for Google’s net worth,” Hauser said. “Relatively small changes in the scope of the investigation, the timeframe of the investigation, can be very big, even if they don’t go to the overall question of will there be any lawsuits by the Justice Department against Google.”

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