Eva Lehman is on the front line of some of Corporate America’s most intriguing legal battles, from investigating the treatment of contract workers in Malaysia to stopping Craigslist hawkers from selling proprietary products before they’re released on the market.
The head attorney for Western Digital Corp.’s global litigation team plays defense, too, representing the Irvine-based disk-drive maker in cases ranging from copyright claims in Germany to allegations of misappropriation of high-stakes trade secrets.
“We’re truly at the forefront of the most cutting-edge legal issues,” said Lehman, who was recognized as a Rising Star at the Business Journal’s fourth annual General Counsel Awards on Sept. 17 at the Hyatt Regency Irvine.
This year she’s also been busy overseeing $714 million in insurance claims, following widespread floods that decimated the company’s manufacturing plants in Thailand in late 2011.
Lehman recently added chief compliance officer to her title of vice president of litigation, taking on a key challenge for a company with some 45,000 employees and major operations around the globe, each with its own set of cultural and regional differences.
The new role means she is responsible for identifying and assessing global risks and implementing programs to mitigate them. She has been running workshops and training sessions around antibribery and corruption concerns, antitrust issues, data privacy, intellectual property and trade compliance, “so we’re conducting business according to the law and the highest ethical standard,” she said.
Lehman’s global tour to assess and interview employees on ethical concerns made a stop in Singapore last week as she establishes compliance liaisons at each of the company’s sites who speak the language and understand the cultural sensitivities and norms of a given region.
Shift, New Network
She’s building a network that never existed in the company’s 43-year history.
“We’re still in the early stages,” Lehman said. “We wanted to really get a buy-in at the local and site level.”
Western Digital has undergone a significant shift since Lehman arrived three years ago.
Revenue from non-PC business lines accounted for more than half of the company’s record sales of $15.4 billion in the 12 months through June, the end of its fiscal year. That was a first for the company that long relied on PCs to drive business.
The company’s disk drives go into computers, external storage devices, corporate networks and consumer electronics.
Western Digital’s strategy to diversify products into the corporate sector and cloud as the growth of digital data and mobile devices explodes was strengthened with last year’s $4.3 billion buy of San Jose-based Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Ltd. The purchase added factories in China and thousands of employees for one of Orange County’s largest public companies.
Struggle
Lehman nearly turned down the offer to join Western Digital but was persuaded by top in-house lawyer Michael Ray, a 2012 General Counsel Award winner in the Public Company category.
“I never thought I would ever leave my law firm” said Lehman, who established Walraven & Lehman LLP with Larry Walraven in 2006 and built it to a successful boutique litigation and labor and employment practice that had Western Digital as a prized client.
“I really struggled with the decision,” she said.
At the time, Lehman and her husband were wrestling with the challenges and logistics of caring for their young son, Luke, who has special needs—and she was pregnant with their second child, Savannah.
“It became clear that one of us had to quit our job,” she said.
Her husband ended up leaving the investment banking industry to take care of their children at home.
“That’s what allowed me to take this job at Western Digital.”
