About

Coming from a private practice background, Peter O’Neill took up his in-house role at Facebook five years ago, which he describes as a refreshing move into a dynamic environment. As one of the earliest members of the Facebook Ireland team, O’Neill leads a team of contract lawyers who support commercial advertising deals for the sales organisation across EMEA, LATAM and APAC. Prior to his legal career, O’Neill completed a masters degree in philosophy, but then changed direction to study law. He worked in the IT law departments of two large Dublin firms, focusing on privacy law and commercial contracts, which served as an excellent foundation and basis for his current role at Facebook. O’Neill finds the wide multjurisdictional breadth of the current work to be highly rewarding, in particular negotiating deals across a diverse range of countries, which requires insight and flexibility of thought. Giving advice to other in-house counsel on how to operate such an environment, O’Neill emphasises the importance of ‘being open minded and collaborative in your thinking and willing to consider carefully the positrion of other people on the other side of the negotiating table’.