CBS names Lawrence Tu chief legal officer

CBS Corp. has named Lawrence P. Tu as its general counsel, tapping the veteran corporate attorney to succeed the retiring Louis Briskman.

Tu, who served as the top lawyer for rival NBC a decade ago, will start in January and will oversee all legal matters related to CBS Corp. and its divisions. He most recently served as general counsel at Dell Inc. in Austin, Texas.

Tu’s title will be senior executive vice president and chief legal officer. He will be based in Los Angeles -- not at the broadcasting company’s corporate headquarters in New York -- and report to Chief Executive Leslie Moonves.

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In recent years, Moonves has spent the bulk of his time in Los Angeles, working from CBS’ complex in Studio City. Other senior CBS executives also have moved to the West Coast.

“Larry possesses a deep understanding of how the law intersects with intellectual property, copyright and content distribution, as well as other issues facing our industry,” Moonves said in a statement.

Tu, 59, worked as Dell’s general counsel for nearly a decade. Before that, he spent three years as general counsel of NBC, helping with the acquisitions of Telemundo, Bravo and Universal Studios. Previously, Tu was a top lawyer with Goldman Sachs Asia Pacific unit, based in Hong Kong.

He practiced law for 15 years at O’Melveny & Myers, specializing in corporate finance. He started his career as a law clerk for Judge Walter Mansfield on the U.S. Court of Appeals, and later for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Tu, who is married with two children, is the son of Chinese immigrants. He was born in New York City, attended Harvard and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He graduated from Harvard Law School.

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