Bruce Sewell Talks About His Experience as General Counsel for Apple [Video]

Former General Counsel for Apple, Bruce Sewell, talks about his experience leading Apple's legal team in an interview shared by YouTube channel "Before You Take the LSAT".

From biglaw litigation partner to the former general counsel of two multinational technology companies — Intel and Apple — Bruce Sewell has had an illustrious career path spanning three decades. Now, after recently retiring, Bruce reflects on the insights and lessons learned throughout his career.


Topics covered include:
● What it's like managing a 900-person legal department, as well as managing legal budget just shy of $1 billion
● What qualities are helpful as a corporate lawyer, transactional lawyer, and as a lawyer in leading positions, such as biglaw partner or general counsel, and
● How working in-house compares to working in a firm.

Interestingly, Sewell says Apple had 350 lawyers billing on just one out of the seven cases vs Samsung. He also addresses the big eBooks case which Apple ended up losing.

"Apple got involved in a very ugly suit with the US government here in the Southern District of New York that had to do with our release of the iBookstore and that was an opportunity where an example of where I tried to chart a course that I thought was incredibly good for Apple and would bear legal scrutiny. There were some things that were going on amongst a group of publishers that I didn't know about. If I had known about them I would have taken a different tack. Forgive the metaphor but that was an example of sailing as close to the wind because it was so important to Apple but in the end I got it wrong and Apple ended up being sued by the government and ended up having to pay a large fine. The reaction from Tim was that's the right choice. You made the best choice that you could with the information that you had. You didn't know about these other things. Don't let that scare you."

Take a look below!