David A. Zapolsky
Senior Vice President, Global Public Policy and General Counsel
Amazon

David Zapolsky manages a broad range of domestic and international legal, public policy, government relations, compliance, and regulatory affairs for Amazon. Before assuming his current position, he served for more than 24 years in a variety of legal and policy roles at Amazon, including as General Counsel since 2012.

Prior to joining Amazon in 1999, David was a litigation partner in the Seattle offices of Dorsey & Whitney and Bogle & Gates. He moved to Seattle in 1994 from New York, where he practiced law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, focusing on securities litigation and white-collar defense. Previously, he served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, focusing primarily on sex crimes, child abuse, and domestic violence prosecutions.

In addition to his work at Amazon, David has taught law school seminars in Technology Law and Public Policy at Berkeley, the University of Washington, and Seattle University. David serves on PBI’s CPBO Advisory Board and is active with several other civic, educational, and legal organizations that, among other things, seek to promote diversity and pro bono work in the legal profession.

David holds an A.B. in Music from Columbia University and received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

David founded the Amazon Legal Department’s pro bono program, known as the Amazon Justice League, in 2014 and signed onto the CPBO Challenge^® initiative in 2016. The legal department partners with law firms and nonprofits around the world to address a wide range of issues, from representing refugees in immigration matters to drafting wills for first responders and their families.

Amazon Justice League Program Highlights

• Help for war-torn Ukraine: When the war started in Ukraine, more than 70 of Amazon’s legal team members from across the globe joined about 70 lawyers and legal professionals from DLA Piper on pro bono projects to help ease the transition for Ukrainian refugees and to combat the illicit trade and counterfeiting of medication and medical devices in Ukraine.
• Holistic aid for people experiencing homelessness: Amazon has a long-standing relationship with Mary’s Place, a nonprofit that offers emergency shelter and outreach services to families experiencing homelessness in the Seattle area. Amazon donated space to Mary’s Place to create an eight-floor facility inside Amazon’s Seattle headquarters that includes a legal office to provide pro bono services.
• Pro bono partnership in Los Angeles: Amazon lawyers and legal professionals provide pro bono services to clients of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles on a variety of matters, such as criminal record expunction, domestic violence, immigration, and housing.
• Assistance to Afghan refugees: Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Amazon has worked directly with Afghan refugees to help them obtain permanent or temporary legal status in a country that would be willing to accept them—and start a new chapter in their lives, free of constant fear.
• Support for survivors of female genital mutilation: A team of 16 Amazon lawyers from across the globe works to help break the silence surrounding female genital mutilation, partnering with Reed Smith to draft legal guides for survivors of the procedure, which is a serious threat to their overall physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
• Global effort to reinforce the right to legal counsel for the criminally accused: More than a decade after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) recognized the universal right to high-quality, no-cost legal representation in criminal cases, an individual’s guarantee of access to criminal defense remains wildly inconsistent depending on where that person lives. In partnership with White & Case and the International Legal Foundation (ILF), Amazon researched right-to-counsel laws in 25 countries to provide a global guidance tool for ILF to use to advocate for stronger criminal defense at the international, regional, and national levels.
• Legal advice for small business and nonprofit entrepreneurs: Through the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center’s Small Business Legal Assistance Program, volunteers from Amazon’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, assist would-be entrepreneurs wanting to start a small business or a nonprofit organization, such as a client wanting to retrofit decommissioned Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority buses into mobile hygiene centers where people experiencing homelessness would have access to a clean bathroom, a hot shower, and laundry facilities.

PBI thanks David Zapolsky and Amazon for their dedication to increasing access to justice and pro bono legal services.