Odd data about the size of Apple’s seemingly small law department in 2007

An interview in Corp. Counsel, Dec. 2011 at 17, with the former general counsel of Apple describes how challenged the law department was when the company launched the iPhone in 2007. Dan Cooperman was then in charge of the “100-lawyer department.” During its fiscal year 2007, Apple’s revenue was about $25 billion, which means this high-tech, cutting edge and iconic company had only four lawyers for every billion dollars of revenue!

That ratio is quite low for a technology company, especially one of Apple’s aggressiveness and clout. The General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey found on 2010 data that 67 Technology companies had a median of more than twice as many lawyers as Apple for every billion in revenue. Something seems to be off about the quoted size of Apple’s core lawyers.

Unfortunately, very little is on this blog about Apple’s legal team (See my post of May 15, 2009 #2: no performance evaluations; Sept. 30, 2010: Apple’s chief patent counsel lauded; and Jan. 17, 2012: Chipsters member from Apple.). Accordingly, it is possible that whoever wrote the article in Corp. Counsel mis-quoted the number of in-house lawyers, or perhaps that is the corporate group and there are business lawyers not accounted for. Or, perhaps Apple is very leanly staffed and relies heavily on outside counsel.