Bill Savitt’s calm cross-exam outlasts Elon twice

A lawyer known for steady, preparation-heavy courtroom work has now twice beaten Elon Musk in major legal fights, including Musk v. Altman. Bill Savitt describes how he prepares for difficult witnesses, refuses to take the bait, and treats litigation as more t

When Elon Musk sat in the witness box, Bill Savitt didn’t raise his voice or chase theatrics. Musk said Savitt’s questions were “designed to trick me” and told him. “You mostly do unfair questions.” Savitt answered in the kind of tone that stays steady even when the room doesn’t: “I am trying to put the questions as fairly as I can. I am doing my best.”.

For Musk, the conflict wasn’t just procedural. It was personal—an argument about fairness as much as a legal confrontation about what happened and what could be believed. Savitt. by contrast. treated the moment as something that had to be controlled by preparation. by pacing. and by refusing to let personality push the examination off its objective.

This is the wider story now playing out beyond the courtroom: Savitt has “won again” against Musk in Musk v. Altman, after previously beating Musk when Musk tried to back out of his agreement to buy Twitter—an effort Savitt represented Twitter in, and “he won.”

Savitt’s broader résumé is the kind that tends to stay mostly out of the public eye until a major celebrity case forces it into the spotlight. He represents Coinbase in its fight against the Securities and Exchange Commission, he’s represented KKR in the Corwin v. KKR Financial matter, and he defended Sotheby’s in a case involving a poison pill. In 2015. legal publisher Lawdragon wrote. “If you read the Wall Street Journal. you might as well be looking at Bill Savitt’s daily calendar.”.

Savitt said he hadn’t dealt directly with Musk before the Twitter dispute. He did have business with Tesla in the past: his firm. Wachtell. Lipton. represented Tesla in its SolarCity acquisition and resulting litigation. But Musk v. Altman was different. It brought Savitt back into a collision with Musk’s courtroom style—one that Savitt described as formidable. smart. and charming. with the ability to “see around corners.”.

He didn’t want to discuss case specifics because Musk is appealing the jury’s verdict in Musk v. Altman. Still, Savitt spoke about the mechanics of preparing to cross-examine a witness like Musk—down to the way he gets himself ready before the questioning begins.

“Massive preparation” is the phrase he returns to. He said you have to know every relevant document “and you’ve got to know it like that [snaps fingers]. You’ve got to have it at your fingertips. You have to because there’s not time in the moment to react.”

He also laid out a boundary that sounds simple until a high-profile witness starts pressing back: never take the bait, never get into a fighting match, and don’t let the force of personality in the witness box pull you away from your objective.

He described what that looks like in practice. He argued against lawyers who stick rigidly to a script. saying that when you do. “you miss tremendous opportunities.” His metaphor is vivid—“a little rabbit runs across the road”—and the job is to chase it when it appears. then return to the project. The point isn’t improvisation for its own sake; it’s preparation so you can recognize the opening and move.

Savitt also explained how sometimes the best questions are the ones that risk something, but with discipline. He referenced a case in which a key issue involved whether someone had information they weren’t supposed to have under a nondisclosure agreement. He said he watched how the witness answered on direct examination. and the way she responded led him to believe she had more information than she should. Then. when he got to the podium. he asked questions that projected confidence that she had the information she wasn’t supposed to have. She resisted at first. but he persisted. and eventually “she thought I had it and she just gave the answer up.”.

That line, he said, opened up a “whole line of questioning” about how the information was obtained, how relevant it was to the corporate activity at issue, and it ultimately helped deliver “a huge win for a client.”

If cross-examination is where the tension lives, presentation is where Savitt says winners often separate themselves from losers. He agreed with the observation that the lawyer who presents a coherent timeline—ordering events clearly so the jury can follow—tends to win. He said nearly every case includes someone trying to present events nonchronologically for reasons tied to emphasis of themes. and that “nearly always it’s a mistake.” In his view. it’s “remarkable just how much easier it is” to understand facts when they’re presented chronologically.

And when he talked about how lawsuits actually work, his emphasis shifted beyond the legal record. He described litigation as usually having a commercial objective underneath it, with cases often resolved long before trial. He warned against treating every dispute as something courts and judges can handle neatly. arguing that “the great majority of litigation has some other objective” such as commercial advantage. strategic negotiation. reputational gain or harm. and leverage.

That’s also why, he said, representing a client isn’t only about being an in-court advocate. “That’s why. ” he said. “when I think about supplying representation. it’s as much about being a counselor across the entire universe of problems that the case is going to pose as opposed to just being a lawyer. being an in-court lawyer. because that’s only part of the job. and a lot of times. it isn’t even most of it.”.

To understand how he mentally survives that kind of workload. Savitt offered a detail that feels almost at odds with the seriousness of the courtroom: he played guitar as part of his preparation for Musk v. Altman. He said he brought a Fender Telecaster to “San Francisco, to Oakland,” with a small but “really terrific amplifier.”.

He said the Telecaster had P-90 pickups and that he ran it through a Cube amplifier that gives a “tremendous amount of distortion at very low volume. ” letting him make noise without disturbing neighbors. The guitar. he said. helped him live with the case for a long time—and he connected it to a broader need to keep his mind calm while carrying “hundreds and hundreds of documents.”.

He also talked about what the playing does for him beyond sound. It’s “pacifying. ” it puts his mind at rest. and it forces him to work with senses that aren’t about legal combat. He described it as “a real benefit” because it’s a different way of apprehending the world—something his body can do when his mind is locked in.

This combination—calm temperament, relentless preparation, and the refusal to get swept into the drama—has helped Savitt become a kind of familiar counterweight to Musk’s courtroom style.

There’s one more part to his story. though. and it points directly at the tech world that so often ends up inside courtrooms now. Savitt said that because Musk is appealing, he declined to discuss specifics of Musk v. Altman. but he still spoke about why he sees the case as tied to something larger: the future of artificial intelligence.

He said the lawsuit wasn’t just about “Elon and Sam”—it was about artificial intelligence and its implications for the future. He described the moment as early and yet intense. with artificial intelligence and its application becoming “points of discussion. controversy. and debate.” In his view. it’s the beginning of “a fascinating and intellectually complex. legally complex series of debates” over how AI is deployed. “when. by whom. and… and by whom” it’s monitored.

He also drilled into legal questions that are starting to feel less futuristic. If an AI note-taker exists, he said, the legal community has to ask whether it could violate client confidentiality. He put the privilege issue bluntly: if you ask an AI a legal question and it gives legal advice. is it privileged?.

And there’s evidence, too. He called admissibility a “fascinating question. ” asking what happens when a chatbot or any AI says something and how that could be used in court. He said it would likely be hearsay and that “you can’t bring it in court. ” while raising the idea of whether a computer could even be put “on the stand and cross-examine it.”.

His answer about the “timeline” of legal change wasn’t about a calendar date. It was about urgency: “These questions are funny,” he said, “but they aren’t too much in the future anymore.”

He spends much of his time in the Court of Chancery in Delaware. and he expects that bench to be “leading-edge” because it will need to be. and because controversies will find their way there. He also expects specialists to rise in artificial intelligence across the legal community. but he believes the most difficult work will still belong to the general trial lawyer—the one who can make AI issues fit into everything else. not treat them like a standalone niche.

As for his own future against Musk. Savitt said he hasn’t taken on any new cases opposing Musk or his enterprises since the trial ended. His practice. he said. has been “pretty busy for a long time. ” and inquiries have come in—though he said it’s hard to know how much Musk v. Altman has influenced that. Still. given the number of lawsuits Musk embroils himself in. Savitt’s position as a key legal adversary seems set to remain more than a one-off.

What lingers after watching the back-and-forth is the contrast between the witness box and the method. Musk framed Savitt’s questions as unfair and designed to trick him. Savitt kept returning to the same discipline: know the documents. don’t take the bait. present events in a timeline that a jury can hold. and treat every lawsuit as a human and commercial contest that spills far beyond the courtroom floor.

Bill Savitt Elon Musk Musk v. Altman OpenAI Sam Altman Twitter legal strategy cross-examination artificial intelligence in law client confidentiality AI privilege hearsay