Last week, Uber fired 20 employees amid an investigation by outside lawyers into hundreds of claims of alleged misconduct. Some employees have received written warnings, and others will receive workplace training.
The sweeping personnel changes came days before Holder and his firm, Covington and Burling, were expected to release the results of their investigation. The report, which is not yet public, will mark a crucial turning point for Uber, one of the world's fastest-growing technology companies.
"When a board asks for this kind of outside expertise and companies have some legal and other problems, then I think it can be critical," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. "It can be a juncture where there's a turnaround, or it could be that the company continues to have these difficulties. But continuing difficulties are going to make it hard for the company to prosper."
The hotly anticipated report may also have ramifications for Silicon Valley as a whole. Tech companies of all sizes have grappled with gender and minority representation for years, showing little progress in their efforts to hire more women, blacks and Latinos. Those they have hired have increasingly spoken out about discriminatory corporate cultures.
One such employee, Susan Fowler, wrote an incendiary blog post in February on workplace conditions at Uber. The former engineer alleged that Uber repeatedly declined to investigate and punish her boss's unwanted sexual advances. Already under fire for the way it handled a taxi strike in New York linked to the Trump administration's travel ban, Uber began seeing more of its users jump to rival platforms as a rising call to "#deleteUber" circulated on social media.
