Steve Sandberg was appointed assistant to the president and general counsel December 1, 2018. At BYU, he oversees the Department of Risk Management and Safety, the Integrity and Compliance Office, and the Office of the General Counsel and he also serves as a liaison for BYU on state and federal government relations matters. In addition to his roles at BYU, Sandberg is the general counsel for BYU–Hawaii, BYU–Idaho and Ensign College.
Prior to working for BYU, he clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld in Fairbanks, Alaska, and was an associate at Morrison & Foerster, LLP in Irvine, California. Sandberg is licensed to practice in California, Hawaii, Idaho and Utah.
After joining BYU as an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel in 2006, Sandberg worked on projects as diverse as negotiating the ESPN contract when BYU went independent in football and joined the West Coast Conference in other sports, working with Congress on federal legislation that allowed BYU to buy the Y on Y Mountain from the U.S. Forest Service, representing BYU in multiple court cases, including two cases he argued before the Utah Supreme Court, and negotiating the UTA contract that provides free mass transit to all BYU students, personnel and their families.
Sandberg received a B.A. in English summa cum laude from BYU and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. At Columbia, Sandberg was a Hamilton Fellow, a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and a senior editor of the Columbia Law Review.