Information is the currency of our digitally powered economy, and that includes our profession. No one appreciates the challenges and opportunities that data presents more than the digital lawyer. Our series for The Legal Intelligencer aims to address the myriad challenges and opportunities that the proliferation of data presents, and we write this installment to add the emergence of domestic data privacy laws to the layers of complexity in the information governance, discovery, and contract analytics work of the digital lawyer. Data privacy obligates us as attorneys to think about the proper handling of personal data in virtually every aspect of the legal work we do.

Historically, data privacy laws have had a modest reach in the United States. As other parts of the world embraced data privacy regulations, the United States lagged and resisted widespread regulation. Federal privacy laws are sector based, focusing on areas such as health care and financial services, but are limited in reach. A patchwork of state laws has emerged, but these laws typically regulate discrete data sources and lack broad application. In litigation, data privacy issues emerge most often when data with medical records, Social Security numbers, or financial account information is at issue.