The Homeland Security Project will host a conversation with former Snapchat General Counsel Chris Handman, discussing social platforms and privacy crises.
Lunch will be served. Space is limited, so please RSVP here: https://goo.gl/forms/dU2pa6MLId04qdH82
When Snapchat had fewer than 60 employees, the company hired Chris to be its first General Counsel. Over the years, as the company grew to more than 2700 employees (and changed its name to Snap Inc.), Chris built the company’s 80-person legal team from the ground up. By the time he left, Chris had navigated Snap through one of the most significant tech IPOs, developed a robust privacy-by-design program, and pioneered strategies to harmonize the company’s restlessly innovative products with existing—and often anachronistic—laws and regulations.
As General Counsel, Chris also oversaw Snap’s public policy, compliance, and law-enforcement departments. In that role, he crafted influential amicus curiae briefs, most notably a brief that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit cited extensively in upholding a First Amendment challenge to New Hampshire’s law banning so-called “ballot selfies”—photos that voters take while in the voting booth. And while Snap was still a young and private company—and long before other tech companies took this step—Chris published the company’s inaugural transparency report, which disclosed in meaningful detail the types of requests Snap had received from law enforcement and how often Snap honored those requests. Yet while championing user privacy from his earliest days at the company, Chris also worked collaboratively with policy makers, prosecutors, and investigators at the state and federal levels to promote child safety and root out online extremism.
Before he came to Snap, Chris was a partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., where he practiced appellate litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal circuit courts, and six State supreme courts. During his time in private practice, Chris argued 49 appeals, covering a wide range of issues that reflected an aggressively generalist practice. In December 2013, shortly before he moved to Snapchat, Chris was named the American Lawyer’s Litigator of the Week for securing a landmark press-freedom ruling from New York’s highest court.
Chris received his law degree in 1997 from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and the editor in chief of the Yale Journal of International Law. He went on to clerk for Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia. He then spent his first three years as an appellate litigator working with now-Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., who then headed up Hogan's appellate practice.
Chris is a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society and serves on the board of the Constitutional Rights Foundation. He’s also a member of the Constitution Project’s Amicus Curiae Committee.
As space is limited for this event, RSVPs will be accepted on a first come, first served basis. Belfer Center Seminars are strictly off-the-record. By requesting to attend the seminar, you agree that you will comply with the Belfer Center's strict policy against recording or disclosing the contents of the seminar. Your access is conditioned on your compliance with these restrictions. Should you violate these rules, the Center will pursue all available legal options and you will be excluded from all future events.
