In 1998, when the United States sued Microsoft in one of the largest antitrust cases of the century, Bill Neukom stood at the center, cutting a recognizable figure at 6 feet 4 inches with ramrod posture and signature bow tie. He told the court and the world that the company was “pro-competitive and pro-consumer”—an argument that led to a 2001 settlement and still resonates in antitrust law today.
Photo: L.A. Cicero
William Horlick Neukom, LLB ’67, longtime Microsoft attorney, former CEO of the San Francisco Giants, and Stanford Law School benefactor, died on July 14. He was 83.
Neukom was raised in San Mateo, Calif., by parents who encouraged him to engage with his community as a useful citizen. As a lawyer, he “felt we were obligated to work in the public interest and hold out high values,” says friend and mentor Llewellyn Pritchard.
While at Shidler McBroom Gates & Baldwin (now K&L Gates), Neukom was tapped by senior partner Bill Gates Sr. to “keep an eye” on his son’s new company. Neukom began representing Microsoft in 1978, when there were just 12 employees, and became its first general counsel in 1985. “We were really on the forefront of an evolution of the law of intellectual property and how it might apply to computer software,” Neukom recalled in an interview with Microsoft last year. “Part of our job—both within the company and within the industry—was educational.”
After retiring as executive vice president in 2002, Neukom served as chair of K&L Gates; president of the American Bar Association; and CEO and managing partner of the San Francisco Giants, when, in 2010, the team won its first World Series since moving to California in 1958. “Bill and I shared the same philosophy that operating a major league baseball team is akin to managing a public trust,” law school classmate Chuck Armstrong, former president of the Seattle Mariners, told Stanford Report. “One is the caretaker for all the fans and the community in which the team plays.”
In 2006, Neukom founded the World Justice Project, an organization committed to advancing the rule of law globally. Each year, the WJP’s Rule of Law Index harnesses data from more than 200,000 household surveys to highlight how people experience the law in their everyday lives—from checks on government power to freedom from corruption to fundamental rights—in 142 countries. “He was a fierce defender of our legal traditions and institutions,” Diego Zambrano, a professor of law and the faculty director of the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law at Stanford, told Stanford Report. “And he had a passionate interest in how courts could deliver for everyday people.”
In 2020, Neukom was awarded the ABA Medal, the American Bar Association’s highest honor, for his lifelong commitment to public service.
Neukom is survived by his wife of 29 years, Sally; former wife, Diane McMakin; children, Josselyn, Samantha, Gillian Neukom Toledo, and John, JD ’04; 14 grandchildren; and brothers, Davidson, ’66, and Daniel, ’71, MA ’72.
Kali Shiloh is a staff writer at Stanford. Email her at kshiloh@stanford.edu.
