When Katherine Adams settles in as Apple Inc.'s new general counsel, a small part of her legal tool kit will include skills she nurtured at the U.S. Supreme Court years ago as a clerk to then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

“Kate was, among other things, the peacemaker—she moderated clashes among Justice O'Connor's clerks, and often served as emissary to other chambers,” recalled Mark Perry, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and fellow O'Connor clerk with Adams in the 1993-94 term. “Kate was—and is—thoughtful, respectful, careful, and mature. As a result, she could find a path forward when others were at odds.”

Apple on Oct. 6 announced that Adams, formerly senior vice president and general counsel to Honeywell International Inc., would become the tech giant's general counsel and senior vice president of Legal and Global Security. She will succeed Bruce Sewell, who will retire at the end of the year.

A graduate of the University of Chicago School of Law, Adams also clerked for then-Chief Judge Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit before her O'Connor clerkship. Breyer, in a sense, followed Adams to the Supreme Court when he took his seat as a justice in August 1994 as Adams finished her O'Connor clerkship. After her year at the high court, Adams worked as a trial attorney in the U.S. Justice Department's environment and natural resources division. Before joining Honeywell in 2003, she was a partner in Sidley Austin in New York.

Adams didn't immediately comment about her time at the Supreme Court, and Sewell did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Sewell wasn't a Supreme Court clerk but he might still be a student of the high court. The Apple photograph that accompanied his retirement announcement showed him and Tim Cook, the company's chief executive, standing next to a row of books that included a biography of Louis Brandeis and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's “My Own Words.”