Back in 2009, Bruce Sewell left the job of General Counsel of Intel to become the General Counsel at Apple. He held that position for about eight years, when he retired and was replaced by Kate Adams, the current General Counsel at Apple. Sewell was recently interviewed by Doreen Benyamin, a rising third year student at Columbia Law School, and a video of the almost 52-minute interview was recently posted to YouTube.
In the interview, Sewell talks about what it was like working as Apple’s GC, splitting his time between the C-Suite and the legal department. The legal department at Apple is in many ways like a large law firm. Sewell had 600 people in his law department, with a budget of almost $1 billion a year. Sewell discussed how to decide what legal matters would be handled in-house at Apple and how to decide what matters to refer to outside counsel. Major litigation matters definitely involved outside counsel, and Sewell managed some incredibly complex litigation. For example, for just one of the seven lawsuits between Apple and Samsung, he had 350 people billing time to the matter. But for many licensing issues, he explained that it made more sense to use inside counsel who had more knowledge about Apple’s technology.
He also discussed the need to start work early at Apple because Apple CEO Tim Cook starts work so early every day. And he discussed the core values of Apple and dedication to excellence, trying to produce the best thing possible and put it out in the world. Sewell felt that those values applied to the law culture at Apple as well.
The interview is not all about Apple. Sewell also talks about the decision to work at a private law firm versus working in-house. So whether you are interested in learning a little more about the legal department at Apple or just what it means to work as an in-house attorney in general, the interview with Sewell is worth watching. The full video is embedded below and of course is available at YouTube: