By Andrew Cohen
With every seat full and students lining the walls, Berkeley Law’s Leadership Lunch Series got off to a rousing start as Netflix Vice President of Legal Chia-Chi Li ’08 described his company’s foray into gaming and his own career journey.
Hosted by the Berkeley Center for Law and Business and Berkeley Business Law Journal, the series welcomes chief legal officers, general counsels, and other leaders of high-profile companies. For this year’s kickoff event, Professor Stavros Gadinis interviewed Li, who discussed the value of taking risks — both in how he got to Netflix and in what he does there.
A Chinese American who spent the summers of 2001 and 2003 in China during college, Li saw telling changes emerge over just those two years. Trade began opening up and a prevailing global narrative of China as a poor nation was steadily changing.
Working at a firm in San Francisco after graduating but itching to return to China, he had two options: join the Hong Kong office of a British firm or join a then small Chinese tech company called Tencent that a mentor had recommended.
“He said, ‘If your goal is to work in the Chinese economy, why go to a British firm?’” Li recalled. “At that point, few American lawyers joined a Chinese company in China. Even my LL.M. friends went to international companies or firms in China.”
Breaking new ground
Li was one of the first foreigners to join Tencent, which had about 30 lawyers. Several months later, it created the wildly popular app WeChat and grew rapidly. Tencent now has more than 112,000 employees and is the world’s largest gaming company.
Eventually overseeing a global team of over 40 lawyers who managed Tencent’s international commercial deals and international products compliance, Li then spent a year and a half as head of legal for Tencent Games Global.
“It was fascinating to be in the belly of a company that grew so quickly and made such an impact on society,” he said. “A Chinese company faces both geopolitical and multinational issues. On the legal front, you need to understand how Chinese regulators and American regulators think, and on the business front you have to know what non-Chinese partners feared or understood, or misunderstood, about Chinese companies.
Li worked on numerous high-level deals, relishing how his work was largely non-siloed.
“I think of a legal career in four buckets,” he said. “One is transactions, licensing, partnerships, and M&A deals. The second is compliance/regulatory and litigation. The third is what I call governance, including acquiring, integrating, and keeping a company running smoothly, and the last is policy. I was blessed as an in-house lawyer because I had to thread a needle between all of them.”
Chimerica no more
Recalling how China and the U.S. once worked more freely together and made regular mutually beneficial corporate deals in an environment some even called “Chimerica,” Li said the landscape changed with President Donald Trump’s election in 2016. The Trump administration later sought to ban WeChat and India banned many Chinese games and apps.
“WeChat is China’s default communication and payment method that touches every part of society there,” Li said. “These days, appeasing both China and the U.S. as a company presents challenges.”
He joined Netflix in May 2022. The company has about 12,000 employees, roughly one-tenth the size of his previous employer, which Li sees helping its legal team lean into reality based decision making.
“At Netflix when we analyze an issue we not just present the risk and benefits, but opine on the practical risk. We all want to enable the business. My main value isn’t drafting agreements, it’s navigating potholes and knowing if and how best to avoid them. I’m exposed to finance, HR, and business matters every day working with games and unique ideas that are just getting off the ground.”
Many students were surely surprised to hear about Netflix’s company culture of freedom and responsibility. “The company hires good people who want to do right by it and in return it trusts those people,” Li said.
Not boxed in
While Netflix is known as the world’s biggest streaming service, the company continues to expand its gaming offerings. The development of small social networks within the gaming world — think teens on headsets bantering with peers who are playing the same game elsewhere — has predictably ignited new concerns. Hailing the creation of industry-wide alliances to establish best practices, Li said companies have coalesced around such practices for rating and designing games.
“The social aspect opens the possibility of people being toxic, threatening, sexually explicit, or racist in the gaming forum,” Li said. “How do games manage this social functionality? There’s also the issue of whether certain games are designed to be addictive or exploitative. Transparency is important, as most legal systems will give consenting adults a lot of freedom as they’re not being misled or defrauded.”
When Gadinis asked what he’d tell himself in law school if he could go back in time, Li emphasized valuing an expansive mindset and cultivating strong relationships.
“I’d say enjoy law school and make connections with your classmates, as those will lead to exciting opportunities more than your classes,” he said. “As law students, remember that the types of things you can touch are very broad and very rewarding.”