Snap’s Top Lawyer Sees Pay Slide 15% Amid Layoffs, Litigation

Snap Inc.’s general counsel Michael O’Sullivan saw his pay package decrease in 2022 for the third consecutive year, according to a securities filing Wednesday.

O’Sullivan earned more than $4.6 million during the last fiscal year, the parent company of social media platform Snapchat disclosed in the filing. That’s down about 15% from the roughly $5.4 million he received a year earlier.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based Snap last year shed 20% of its staff and scaled back investments, one of several major reductions in force to hit the technology sector. The cutbacks reportedly included at least seven Snap lawyers.

The company, which last year hired a new chief compliance officer, didn’t respond to a request for comment about personnel matters.

Snap is facing scrutiny from the Justice Department and FBI over accusations that suppliers are using Snapchat to sell fentanyl-laced pills to teenagers.

O’Sullivan draws a $500,000 annual base salary from the company. His pay last year included $100,000 in non-equity incentive plan compensation, about $22,000 in health care-related compensation, and more than $4 million in stock awards.

He has been Snap’s top lawyer since 2017, when he joined the company after more than two decades at Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles. O’Sullivan succeeded Snap’s first-ever legal chief Christopher Handman.

Family Lawyers

Snap also noted that it paid nearly $6 million last year in legal fees to Munger Tolles and more than $350,000 to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. The two law firms are home to the parents of Snap co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel.

Spiegels’ father, Munger Tolles litigation partner John Spiegel, has provided legal services to Snap, the company said. So has Debra Wong Yang, a former top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, where she chairs Gibson Dunn’s crisis management practice and once led the firm’s white-collar defense and investigations group.

Yang is Spiegel’s stepmother.

Snap tapped Munger Tolles to handle more than 7% of the cases it has faced in US federal courts within the past five years, according to Bloomberg Law data. Cooley got the call on nearly 20% of such cases, while Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton had almost 10% of that docket.

Sheppard Mullin is currently representing Snap in a patent infringement lawsuit filed last summer by PlayVuu Inc., while Munger Tolles is advising the company in an unrelated product liability case.

Public filings show that Cozen O’Connor’s public policy and government strategies arm received $110,000 from Snap last year to lobby on issues related to health care.