CHICAGO, September 11, 2024 — Melissa Siebert, co-founder and chair of Cozen O’Connor’s Emerging Data Privacy Trends practice, has been named to Crain’s Chicago Business 2024 list of Notable Leaders in Accounting, Consulting & Law.
Melissa is profiled in the September 9 issue of Crain’s. You can read more about her in her individual online entry here.
Siebert leads one of the nation’s first biometric privacy and pixel-related class action defense practices, one of few such women-led practices in the country. Over a 32-year career, she has defended hundreds of class actions, representing clients in data privacy-related class actions/multiparty/individual litigation in federal/state courts and in arbitration, including cases involving the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
Siebert’s experience handling BIPA cases has made her one of the leading lawyers in the rapidly developing area of biometric privacy litigation. She has argued and won some of the most significant BIPA appeals to date, garnering defense victories before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. These landmark wins are recognized as laying the groundwork for one of the few clear paths to victory for BIPA defendants.
She also manages sub-practices focused on ransomware, data breach, session replay/wiretapping, and pixel-tracking litigation, including lawsuits brought under the California Information Privacy Act (CIPA), and class actions brought pursuant to the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA).
In addition, Siebert leads a team that is at the forefront of defending litigation based on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and is currently defending several AI-based class actions.
Siebert received her J.D. (1992) from Northwestern University School of Law, her M.B.A. (2000) from Northwestern University - Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and her B.A. (1989) from Bucknell University.
About Cozen O’Connor
Established in 1970, Cozen O’Connor has more than 925 attorneys who help clients manage risk and make better business decisions. The firm counsels clients on their most sophisticated legal matters in all areas of the law, including litigation, corporate, and regulatory law. Representing a broad array of leading global corporations and middle market companies, Cozen O’Connor services its clients’ needs through 33 offices across two continents.