Election integrity, fake news, free speech and the role of social media are never far from the headlines, which is why our support of key client Facebook is so critical.

Helping the social media giant stay on the right side of the law requires a monumental global team effort, as Los Angeles-based Global Relationship Partner Aalok Sharma explains.

“As Facebook’s primary external counsel for international civil litigation matters, it’s not unusual for us to be working with them on thousands of lawsuits at any given time, with dozens of cases currently before the world’s highest courts,” he says.

“Our support of Facebook is led by a core team of around 80 lawyers, mainly based in Los Angeles, with the wider support of approximately 500 White & Case lawyers across virtually all our offices, and more than 200 carefully vetted local counsel in 150 countries across six continents.”

Recent years have seen Facebook greatly increase its focus on protecting itself from content that could result in electoral fraud – an issue that grew to prominence following the 2016 U.S. election.

Since then, we’ve been serving as Facebook’s global elections integrity counsel, making sure the company understands and complies with election laws around the world outside of the United States, with November’s Brazilian municipal elections and its 600,000 candidates, serving as an excellent example of the size and complexity of the work we do for them.

“Brazil is a particularly good example because it is the most litigious country in the world as far as the sheer volume of litigation we encounter.”

Aalok explains: “Brazil is a particularly good example because it is the most litigious country in the world as far as the sheer volume of litigation we encounter. During the election season, the litigation volume explodes as politicians run their online campaigns via Facebook and WhatsApp, often in violation of onerous election laws, and users post false, misleading or hateful political content.

“When these things happen, Facebook has to respond rapidly to analyze and, where appropriate, remove illegal content and avoid hefty fines and reputational damage. This is why they need a proactive and responsive legal partner, with expert knowledge of local and global election and intermediary liability laws.”

In fact, Facebook received more than 5,600 lawsuits during the Brazilian elections (4,000 between September and November), all of which needed to be responded to and followed through within extremely tight timescales.

Aalok explains: “In some cases, the fines for lack of compliance can start within an hour of receipt of the court order, and are compounded on an hourly basis, so the speed of response required is staggering. When you add in the fact that Facebook received 150 to 180 new lawsuits a day in the run-up to the Brazilian elections, it requires a massive, coordinated team effort.”

Despite this huge undertaking, Facebook’s legal response to the Brazilian elections was highly successful, in no small part due to the exhaustive forecasting and preparation put in by the White & Case team.

Back in 2018, Associate Cristina Brandao of our Los Angeles office prepared a forecast for the 2020 election season based on the volume of litigations from the past five Brazilian elections we’ve worked with Facebook on, plus other relevant factors.

She estimated that Facebook would receive 5,200 litigations in the 2020 elections, which was remarkably accurate. The actual figure stood at 5,217 on election day, an increase of 127 per cent over 2016.

Cristina’s estimate also prompted the Los Angeles team to increase the size of the team working on the elections well in advance, adding six further lawyers.

Due to the volume of litigation and the regional sensitivity of some of the cases, we worked closely with local counsel in Brazil, managing and directing the case strategy for every single lawsuit – a model we use for all our litigation-related support of the client.

Based on Cristina’s forecast, we asked our local partner, Tozzini Freire, to bolster their team to 120 lawyers for the duration of the elections – another factor that ensured a successful result for Facebook, and particularly important as we are not authorized to practice Brazilian law and that all Brazilian law matters, including litigation in Brazil needed to be handled by Tozzini.

Cristina says: “There is simply no way that the Facebook team in São Paulo could respond to the amount of lawsuits it receives without detailed pre-planning, so we worked with them months in advance to agree on template responses for all the types of scenarios we expected to encounter, so as the lawsuits rolled in, we could quickly adapt the templates to the specific fact scenario of each case to meet our response deadlines.

“Over the years, we’ve created many comprehensive playbooks that lay out how Facebook should respond to different cases and that detail the operational protocols for White & Case, our local law firm, Facebook and WhatsApp to follow to make sure we all work together effectively and efficiently.

“And we also work with Facebook on compliance in advance of the elections, providing our advice on the tools they use to identify and action illegal or improper content.

“Overall, this proactive strategy is necessary to ensure a joined-up, consistent approach. We’re able to do this successfully, because we understand them and the challenges they’re facing better than anyone.

“And the fact that all of the Firm’s team working on the Brazil elections are Portuguese speakers also helped.

“The value of having a legal team like White & Case who understands Facebook’s business and the issues it faces is vital, because its Risk and Response Team, which is responsible for taking down sensitive content, needs to rely on a team they can trust to make quick decisions to avoid liability and huge money damages.

“This year, we helped them remove 140,000 pieces of content for violation of Facebook’s voter suppression policies.”

“We’ve come a long way from our early experiences with elections and we’re in such a great place now thanks to the diligence and dedication of this awesome team, even as the volume and complexity of cases we face continue to grow.”

SANDEEP SOLANKI, GLOBAL HEAD OF LITIGATION, FACEBOOK

The Firm’s support during the elections won high praise from the client’s in-house team, with Facebook’s interim Global Head of Litigation Sandeep Solanki writing: “I just wanted to thank you for all the amazing work you’ve been doing around this year’s elections.

“We’ve come a long way from our early experiences with elections and we’re in such a great place now thanks to the diligence and dedication of this awesome team, even as the volume and complexity of cases we face continue to grow.

“I wish I could be there in person to give you all a big hug and high five, but we’ll have to settle for a (hopefully) belated samba celebration next year!”

Sandeep’s message conveys the strength of the relationship we have with Facebook, built over the past decade.

Aalok says: “We’ve been working with the tech giant since 2011 and, over the past 10 years, have increased our annual business from $800,000 to more than $130 million. We did that by building deep relationships, which now involve working with over 500 in-house Facebook lawyers on any given day, across 15 legal workstreams. We handle thousands of cases in over 150 countries, and the relationship continues to get stronger.

“I think anyone who has worked on a Facebook matter will tell you that they are floored by the speed of response required, and the complexity and the quality of the work expected. We’ve had to create a global machine which combines unrivaled substantive advice on cutting-edge issues with a strong integrated operational platform that has scaled alongside Facebook’s, to provide our client with the service it needs and demands.

“This relationship has been 11 years in the making, and we hope to continue helping them tackle the immense range of legal challenges they face across the globe.

“These include advising them on new and evolving regulations around the world in the areas of privacy, data protection, competition, fake news and misinformation, among many others.

“The secret to our success with Facebook is the power of the personal touch, the strength and quality of the global team we’ve assembled, and our ability to scale quickly and always stay one step ahead of the competition and our client’s issues.

“I’m confident that no other law firm in the world can match the breadth and depth of the relationship we’ve developed with Facebook over the years, or our ability to handle a challenging and complex litigation portfolio on such a global scale.”

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