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Twitter has lost its last deputy general counsel as its legal team shrinks, a report says

Grace Dean   

Twitter has lost its last deputy general counsel as its legal team shrinks, a report says
Tech2 min read
  • Twitter deputy general counsel Regina Lima has left the company, Bloomberg Law reported.
  • The social-media platform's legal team, which once stood at close to 200, is now largely depleted.

Twitter has lost its last deputy general counsel, Bloomberg Law reported.

Regina Lima, who was formerly Twitter's head of international legal before becoming a deputy general counsel in late 2021, has left the company after almost nine years, four sources familiar with Twitter's operations told the publication. She had previously been based in Miami, the publication reported.

Bloomberg Law did not report on the circumstances or date of Lima's departure. Lima did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, made outside regular working hours.

Before Elon Musk took control of Twitter in late October, the company had around 200 staff on its legal team, according to Bloomberg Law. This has since been largely depleted due to a series of firings, lay offs, and resignations, affecting departments at the company ranging from marketing and human resources to engineering.

Musk has pulled in staff from his other companies to plug the gap. According to The New York Times, more than half a dozen lawyers at SpaceX have been given access to Twitter's internal systems, including vice president of legal Chris Cardaci, who's been at the company for nearly a decade, and senior vice president of global business and government affairs Tim Hughes.

Musk had also initially brought in his personal lawyer Alex Spiro, who formed part of what was dubbed Musk's "war room," but people familiar with the decision told The Times that Spiro no longed worked at Twitter.

Twitter's legal team was shaken up as soon as Musk's purchase of Twitter went through. One of the tech mogul's first moves was to fire chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sean Edgett, as well as CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal.

After Gadde and Edgett's terminations, James Baker, a former FBI general counsel, was the company's most senior lawyer. Musk said that Baker was "exited" from Twitter on December 6 for allegedly interfering in the publication of the "Twitter Files," a trove of articles and documents that Musk says will unveil flaws in Twitter's content-moderation systems under previously leadership.

Other employees who have left include former deputy general counsel Kevin Cope, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran, chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty, and head of global litigation, regulatory, and competition Karen Colangelo, Bloomberg Law reported, without specifying the circumstances of their departure. Cope, Kieran, Fogarty, and Colangelo didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Twitter's former human-rights counsel said in early November that Musk laid off the company's entire human rights team.


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