(Reuters) - It's been a tumultuous year for in-house legal chiefs. The coronavirus pandemic led many companies to cut law department pay or headcount while increasing workload. Several leading general counsel added job titles or got new gigs. Others left the in-house world completely.

Here are some of the biggest in-house shakeups of 2020.

ALPHABET: One of 2020's largest in-house departures pre-dates the pandemic's U.S. wave. In January, Google's parent company Alphabet Inc parted ways with its chief legal officer David Drummond, whose outsized strategic role had been overshadowed by employee concerns about his personal relationship with a subordinate.

Drummond had been with Google since its start in 1998, when he was outside counsel for the company while a corporate partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He later spent nearly 18 years as the company's top lawyer and one of its few Black executives.

When Google reorganized under the Alphabet umbrella in 2015, co-founder Larry Page elevated Drummond's role beyond managing the company's legal and regulatory problems to overseeing its investment funds and far-off ventures.

Some employees had questioned Drummond's role at the company after the New York Times in 2018 reported on an extramarital affair he had with a subordinate, Jennifer Blakely, starting in 2004. She told the paper that she was effectively forced to transfer teams to comply with Google's workplace dating policy.

Blakely had a son with Drummond, but in August 2019 she publicly criticized him for not providing support. Drummond responded in a statement, calling himself "far from perfect."

Since his departure, Alphabet's Google has been hit with long-brewing lawsuits alleging anticompetitive behavior, accusations the company has denied. Google also in August promoted its lead products and commercial lawyer Halimah DeLaine Prado to general counsel.

MCDONALD'S: McDonald's Corp in October announced its general counsel Jerome Krulewitch had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and had opted to follow his doctors' advice to step down.

Krulewitch had been "a part of McDonald's for almost 20 years," he said in a statement at the time. U.S. general counsel Mahrukh Hussain was tapped as his interim successor.

During his tenure, Krulewitch counseled McDonald's "through complex situations, including two of the most significant franchising transactions in (its) history where he led the strategy, selection and negotiation with key partners to franchise almost 4,000 restaurants in China, Hong Kong and Latin America," Chief Executive Chris Kempczinski said in an internal memo reviewed by Reuters in October.

He's not the only food industry GC to announce his departure this year. Chocolate maker the Hershey Co this month said its general counsel Damien Atkins will step down at the end of January due to a family illness. And Coca-Cola Co's general counsel Bernhard Goepelt retired in February and was succeeded by Bradley Gayton, who had been GC of Ford Motor Co.

- TIKTOK: Popular mobile video app TikTok in January announced it had hired Erich Andersen, who had been Microsoft Corp's chief intellectual property counsel, to serve as its global general counsel.

Andersen's ex-employer Microsoft would later in 2020 emerge as a top contender to buy TikTok's U.S. operations, as President Donald Trump moved to effectively ban the app, owned by China's ByteDance, on national security grounds. It eventually lost its bid. At least two U.S. judges have, as of this month, blocked the Trump administration's restrictions on TikTok.

Andersen worked at Microsoft for more than 20 years, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was previously at law firm Davis Wright Tremaine.

WELLS FARGO: Wells Fargo & Co tapped Ellen Patterson as its general counsel in March, when the bank's new Chief Executive Charles Scharf was leading a shake-up in its management and hiring external candidates as top executives.

Patterson joined after more than seven years at Canada's Toronto-Dominion Bank, where she had been general counsel.

Wells Fargo's previous general counsel, Allen Parker, who briefly served as its interim chief executive, late last year announced plans to step down.

Scharf named several executives to new roles after taking over Wells Fargo in late 2019.

Other banking giants also shook in-house ranks in 2020.

Deutsche Bank in May said it had promoted Karen Kuder, who had worked at the bank for more than 20 years, to general counsel.

HSBC Holdings PLC in October announced Robert Hoyt, the former top lawyer at British bank Barclays, would join it as group chief legal officer. Barclays had in July appointed its corporate secretary and deputy general counsel Stephen Shapiro as its group general counsel.

ZOOM: Zoom Video Communications Inc, the company whose online meeting services have become a regular part of life around the world during the coronavirus pandemic, in September said it had hired longtime Silicon Valley lawyer Jeff True as its general counsel.

True joined Zoom in August, after nearly a decade as general counsel of Palo Alto Networks, according to his LinkedIn profile. Zoom bumped its former general counsel Aparna Bawa to chief operating officer in May, as the company's sales skyrocketed - along with its legal issues.

Since the pandemic led schools and businesses to go remote in March, Zoom has been hit with multiple lawsuits over its privacy standards, including concerns over "zoombombing," where uninvited guests crash online meetings.