Jennifer Newstead’s Big Meta to Apple Move
Meta’s chief legal officer Jennifer Newstead is exiting Menlo Park and heading to Cupertino, where she will join Apple in January as senior vice president and take over as general counsel on 1 March 2026, replacing longtime GC Kate Adams, who is retiring.
In a single move, Apple has hired the lawyer who helped steer Meta through some of its ugliest regulatory battles and will hand her not just the legal function but government affairs as well.
Meta’s top lawyer to Apple
Apple has confirmed that Newstead will join the company’s executive team in January, reporting directly to CEO Tim Cook, before formally assuming the GC role in March 2026.
Her role at Apple will extend beyond traditional corporate and litigation work as Apple is consolidating its Legal and Government Affairs organisations.
The move indicates there is a very clear recognition that tech regulation now lives where law and politics collide. We only need to look at the payout to President Trump and the waves made by former Meta lawyer Sarah Wynn-Williams with her book.
Meta is losing the lawyer who has been its top in‑house legal voice since 2019 and who oversaw a recent “historic” win when a federal judge rejected the FTC’s attempt to unwind the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions.
The departure also keeps the Apple-Meta talent pipeline nicely reciprocal given that Meta just hired Apple’s longtime human interface design chief Alan Dye as its chief design officer.
What Newstead brings to Apple?
Newstead arrives at Apple after more than six years as Meta’s chief legal officer, where she was responsible for global legal matters, corporate governance, and the company’s response to privacy, antitrust and regulatory actions worldwide.
Her experience includes managing multi‑jurisdictional probes, negotiating with regulators and defending the business model of a company permanently on the front page of the enforcement regimes.
Apple’s own announcement leans heavily into her international and public‑policy credentials, with Cook emphasizing her “depth of experience” and the logic of combining legal and government affairs under one leader as regulatory pressure ramps up globally.
The combined title – senior vice president, General Counsel and Government Affairs – signals that Apple wants a single, politically fluent lawyer at the table as it navigates antitrust scrutiny, App Store fights, AI regulation and competition law across the US, EU and beyond.
The Newstead Career Track
For lawyers wondering what sort of CV gets you the Apple GC job, Newstead’s is very much the “maximum‑difficulty” route.
She graduated from Harvard (B.A., 1991) and Yale Law School (J.D., 1994), then clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman on the D.C. Circuit and Justice Stephen Breyer on the US Supreme Court.
After clerking, she moved into government roles including Associate Counsel to the President, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy, and General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget.
Between those stints, she spent time as a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell, adding classic Wall Street corporate and regulatory experience before re‑entering government as Legal Adviser to the US State Department, a Senate‑confirmed role with the rank of Assistant Secretary.
She joined Facebook/Meta from the State Department in 2019 and has since been the public‑facing steward for the company’s most sensitive legal and policy issues.
In‑house Law Effect
For in‑house counsel and law‑firm partners watching the in‑house arms race, Newstead’s move is a neat case study in what Big Tech now wants at the top for those studying how to gain an entree to Big Tech, including –
- Deep public‑law and policy experience (State Department, DOJ, OMB, White House) to engage regulators as peers, not just opponents.
- BigLaw partner credentials to manage sprawling outside‑counsel ecosystems and board‑level risk.
- A track record of surviving – and occasionally winning – antitrust and regulatory showdowns at a global platform company.
With Apple tightening its executive structure and folding government affairs into the GC’s office, the Newstead appointment looks less like a routine succession and more like pre‑litigation positioning for the next decade of tech regulation
| Role | Organisation | Scope | Notable features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chief Legal Officer (2019–2025) businessinsider+1 | Meta | Global legal matters, corporate governance, regulatory and litigation strategy | Oversaw FTC antitrust defence, privacy and competition investigations worldwide businessinsider+2 |
| SVP, General Counsel & Government Affairs (from 2026) apple+1 | Apple | Global legal function plus consolidated government affairs and policy | Reports to Tim Cook; inherits post‑Adams legal agenda amid intensifying global tech regulation apple+2 |
Newstead’s jump from Meta to Apple underlines how Big Tech now treats legal and government affairs as a single, high‑stakes battlefield.
Apple gains a seasoned operator who has already survived years of antitrust, privacy and regulatory warfare, while Meta loses its chief legal strategist at a delicate moment.
For lawyers, the move is a sharp reminder that the real action and influence increasingly sits with in‑house leaders who can navigate courts, regulators and politics with equal fluency.
