Disney’s top lawyer has told his department it will be “a much smaller organization” as the company prepares for another round of layoffs. The warning came in a September 18 memo from Horacio Gutierrez, Disney’s chief legal and global affairs officer, to the Legal and Global Affairs department he runs, first reported by Deadline.
“Obviously, this will require hard choices about where and how we deploy our resources and investments, including our staffing investments and how we work will look different in the months and years ahead,” Gutierrez wrote. “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.”
What The Memo Says
The department has fewer than 1,000 employees worldwide. Gutierrez described a “transformation process” in which legal, government relations and operations work is being reshaped by technology, and said he is “taking a dispassionate look at every aspect of how we do our work, so we can do it in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.”
He listed the options under consideration: automating certain workflows “by leveraging the latest technologies,” moving to self-service models, bringing in alternative legal providers, expanding shared services and outsourcing. The memo never uses the words artificial intelligence or layoffs, but it points clearly at both.
Gutierrez also tied the plan to Disney’s new chief executive. “Josh’s vision is of a Disney that succeeds in a changing market by breaking internal walls and embracing technology to amplify what makes it great, not by clinging to the way things always have been done,” he wrote.
Wider Cuts Are Expected Soon
The memo was written for one department, but it has been passed around the wider company, where employees are bracing for a round of layoffs that could start as early as next week. The cuts inside Legal and Global Affairs are separate from that next round, according to Deadline. Disney declined to comment on the memo or on the timing and size of any job cuts.
Disney has already cut jobs twice this year, in April and July, and executives said on the August 5 earnings call that more were coming. In August the company also offered a voluntary early retirement package to eligible longtime executives, and the deadline to accept it was approaching when the memo went out. Involuntary layoffs were always expected to follow.
The memo went out the same day Disney named former Character.AI chief executive Karandeep Anand as its first chief technology officer, reporting directly to D’Amaro.
Who Horacio Gutierrez Is
Gutierrez joined Disney from Spotify in late 2021, replacing longtime general counsel Alan Braverman. He was hired under Bob Chapek and was one of the few senior Chapek appointees to keep his job after Bob Iger returned as chief executive in November 2022. Chapek gives his own account of that period in his memoir, out September 29, which takes credit for D’Amaro’s rise and blames Iger for his firing.
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