Key points:

• Snap is appointing Munger, Tolles & Olson partner Zachary Briers as general counsel as Michael O’Sullivan prepares to leave at year-end.
• The move deepens Snap’s already significant reliance on Munger, which billed about $51.2 million for work in 2024, alongside key mandates for Gibson Dunn.
• Briers brings a technology- and AI-heavy transactional background, including a 2024 Stability AI deal, as Snap faces ongoing platform, privacy and employment risk.

Snap Inc. is turning again to Munger, Tolles & Olson for its top legal job, naming partner Zachary Briers as general counsel as longtime legal chief Michael O’Sullivan prepares to exit at the end of 2025.

Briers, a 13-year Munger veteran based in Los Angeles, announced the move this week on LinkedIn. Snap has not issued a standalone press release, but the company recently listed him as general counsel in a routine regulatory filing, following O’Sullivan’s earlier notice that he would step down effective December 31, 2025.

The appointment extends an unusually tight loop between Snap’s C-suite and its outside firms. Munger handled approximately $51.2 million in work for Snap in 2024, according to a prior securities filing, while Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher collected about $11.6 million over the same period. Those mandates sit alongside long-standing family ties: Snap CEO Evan Spiegel’s father, John Spiegel, is a Munger partner, while Gibson Dunn partner Debra Wong Yang, who also works on Snap matters, is Spiegel’s stepmother.

Briers’ own firm biography underscores a practice centered on technology and high-growth companies. At Munger, he has represented founders, ultra-high-net-worth individuals and disruptive tech businesses in complex transactions and IP-heavy matters, particularly in the consumer internet and platform space. That profile is detailed in his Munger, Tolles & Olson overview, which highlights his work for prominent tech founders and fashion-industry clients in deals and sensitive disputes on the firm’s website.

One of Briers’ most visible recent matters came in June 2024, when he co-led Munger’s corporate team advising Sean Parker and Prem Akkaraju on a transaction that shifted control of generative AI company Stability AI and brought in a new investor group. Stability AI described the deal as an “initial round of investment” from a roster of institutional and individual investors, including Coatue, Lightspeed, Greycroft and others, in an announcement last summer on its site. Munger separately emphasized the transaction as a “transformative” investment in its own deal summary, noting Briers’ role on the team in the firm’s published achievement.

That AI and emerging-tech deal experience aligns with a core part of Snap’s strategic story. The company has repeatedly framed its long-term narrative around augmented reality, creator tools and mobile engagement, even as it has grappled with slowing ad growth and cost controls. Analyst commentary on O’Sullivan’s departure earlier this fall, for example, stressed that the leadership change did not appear to alter Snap’s broader AR-centric thesis in notes reported by Yahoo Finance.

For in-house teams and outside counsel, the move will likely be read as both continuity and escalation. Continuity, because Snap again is elevating a Munger partner to the GC role, as it did when it hired O’Sullivan out of the firm in 2017. Escalation, because the scale of Munger’s mandate has grown significantly since then and now sits alongside a more mature risk environment around content moderation, antitrust scrutiny, data privacy and employee relations.

Snap’s own leadership materials describe O’Sullivan as a longtime Munger lawyer who joined the company in July 2017 after more than two decades in private practice, advising boards and founders on corporate transactions and governance matters in his official biography. Under his tenure, Snap’s annual revenue increased roughly sixfold to about $5.4 billion, but the legal function also oversaw a series of high-value settlements.

Among them: a 2020 investor case in which Snap agreed to pay $187 million to resolve allegations that it misled investors before its IPO, including by downplaying competitive pressure from Instagram; a 2022 class action that led to a $35 million settlement over alleged biometric data collection practices without adequate consent; and a 2023 agreement to pay $15 million to resolve claims brought by the California Civil Rights Department alleging gender discrimination, unequal pay and retaliation affecting female employees.

During this period, Snap’s spending on legal services and its compensation to the GC role drew attention from governance observers. A 2023 analysis of securities filings by Bloomberg Law, for example, reported that Snap spent around $15 million on legal fees in 2022, with roughly $12 million going to Munger, and that O’Sullivan’s compensation more than doubled to about $9.4 million that year, driven largely by stock awards according to that report. Snap’s more recent disclosures show O’Sullivan as the company’s highest-paid executive in 2024, with compensation of about $11 million, again heavily equity-based.

O’Sullivan formalized his departure plans in early September, notifying Snap that he would leave his roles as general counsel and secretary as of December 31, 2025. In a filing summarized by MarketScreener, Snap noted that his decision was not the result of any disagreement with the company on accounting, strategy, management or other policy matters as reflected in that disclosure.

For Snap’s existing panel of firms, Briers’ move raises practical questions rather than obvious immediate displacement. On one hand, a GC who knows Munger’s platform from the inside is likely to keep the firm close on strategic matters, especially those involving founder and executive issues, board-level conflicts and complex transactions where he has deep experience. On the other, corporate clients frequently revisit panel structures when a new general counsel arrives, and peers will be watching whether Snap broadens work to additional firms in areas such as employment, privacy, antitrust or international regulatory enforcement.

The appointment also lands in a wider moment in which technology companies are tapping partners from key outside firms as GCs, often from practices focused on platform regulation and data. For large-firm partners, the move offers operational influence and a front-row seat on regulatory strategy. For boards, the trade-off is between continuity and independence, particularly where there are existing family or personal relationships with outside counsel and significant annual fee flows to those firms.

With Briers stepping into the role, corporate legal leaders will be watching for several early signals: whether Snap recalibrates its litigation and settlement posture, how it positions itself in the next wave of AI-related content and IP disputes, and whether the company tweaks its external roster to emphasize specialized regulatory and employment expertise alongside its incumbent firms. For now, the hire underscores how tightly intertwined Snap’s senior legal bench remains with the firms that have long sat across the table on its most consequential matters.

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