Disney’s top lawyer warned the company’s legal and government affairs staff that their division will become a much smaller organization, with automation and outsourcing set to reshape the work and hit some employees directly.
Deadline reported that Chief Legal and Global Affairs Officer Horacio Gutierrez sent an end-of-week memo at noon on September 18 to the Legal and Government Affairs department, known inside the company as LGA.
The memo made plain that hard staffing choices are coming. LGA counts just under 1,000 members worldwide. Gutierrez told them the group will look different in the months and years ahead.
Disney declined to comment on the memo or on the timeline and scope of upcoming job cuts when contacted Thursday. Rank-and-file workers were already bracing for another round of layoffs expected as early as the following week.
In the memo, Gutierrez wrote that legal, government relations, operations, and other functions are going through their own reinvention as technology reshapes how work gets done.
He said the company is taking a dispassionate look at every aspect of the work so it can be done in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.
Gutierrez put the bottom line in blunt terms:
"LGA will be a much smaller organization than it is today, and some of you will personally be affected by decisions we make in this process. As a result, we’ll have to consider a whole range of new models for different workloads, including automating certain workflows by leveraging the latest technologies, moving to self-service models where appropriate, engaging alternative legal providers and others, and new expanded share services, even outsourcing."
He added that hard choices would cover where and how Disney deploys resources and investments, including staffing. How the work looks will change.
The memo landed on the same day Disney named Karandeep Anand, the former Character.AI chief executive, as the company’s first chief technology officer. Anand will report directly to Josh D’Amaro.
Gutierrez tied the LGA overhaul to D’Amaro’s vision. He wrote that the goal is a Disney that succeeds in a changing market by breaking internal walls and embracing technology to amplify what makes the company great, not by clinging to the way things have always been done.
He framed the payoff this way: when teams work smarter, Disney can serve more fans at lower costs, freeing capital to reinvest in content, guest experiences, and technology infrastructure.
This warning did not arrive in a vacuum. Disney carried out job cuts in April and again in July. On an August 5 earnings call, executives made no secret that more reductions were coming.
In August, EVP and Chief People Officer Sonia Coleman first unveiled voluntary early retirement packages. The deadline for qualifying longtime executives to take that offer was looming around the time of the memo. Involuntary layoffs were expected to follow.
Deadline noted that unspecified cuts already made inside LGA were not connected to the next company-wide round. Still, the Gutierrez memo made clear the legal and government affairs bench itself is next in line for a permanent downsizing.
The memo circulated quickly beyond the department. It spread through the entertainment law community in Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C.
Gutierrez joined Disney from Spotify in late 2021 during Bob Chapek’s tenure and replaced longtime legal chief Alan Braverman. When Bob Iger returned as CEO in late 2022, Gutierrez was one of the few key Chapek lieutenants who kept his job.
Now he is the executive delivering the message that LGA will shrink and that technology, self-service tools, outside legal providers, shared services, and outsourcing will handle work once done inside the department.
Disney would not discuss numbers, timing, or how deep the cuts will run. The memo itself did not put a headcount on the reductions. It simply stated the organization will be much smaller and that some employees will be personally affected.
Companies that keep bloated cost structures while markets shift eventually pay for it in lost ground. Disney’s legal chief just told his own team the old headcount model is over.