Privacy & Data Protection

At Lee & Hayes, we help companies transform regulatory compliance into competitive advantage. We combine deep legal expertise with technical fluency and operational experience to build privacy and data programs that are practical, defensible, and aligned with your business objectives.

Strategic Privacy Assessment and Program Development

Many organizations discover privacy gaps only after facing an incident, audit, or regulatory inquiry. Our enterprise-wide assessment approach transforms your privacy posture from reactive to strategic by providing a clear picture of where you stand and a roadmap for improvement.

We work directly with key stakeholders across legal, compliance, product, security, HR, marketing, and data teams to understand how privacy intersects with your actual business operations. Our team reviews your existing policies, procedures, and contracts while mapping your data flows and regulatory obligations across all relevant jurisdictions—from GDPR and CCPA to sector-specific requirements like HIPAA and PCI DSS. Our comprehensive gap analysis identifies your highest-risk areas and delivers a prioritized remediation roadmap for risk mitigation.

Privacy Impact Assessments and Risk Mitigation

Launching a new product, feature, or data initiative without proper privacy assessment can lead to costly redesigns, regulatory scrutiny, and customer trust issues. Our Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) and Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) help you identify and mitigate privacy risks before the product launches. We assess data processing activities, third-party integrations, AI models, and cross-border data transfers to satisfy regulatory requirements while providing practical recommendations aligned with your timelines.

Security by Design Reviews

Building security and privacy controls into your systems from the ground up is far more effective—and cost-efficient—than retrofitting them later. Our security by design reviews help development teams build privacy controls from the ground up. We review architecture against SOC 2, NIST, ISO 27001/27701, and OWASP standards, coordinating with cybersecurity specialists for code reviews and penetration testing when needed.

Incident Response Readiness

Privacy and security incidents are business-critical events that require coordinated legal, technical, and communications responses. Our incident readiness assessments ensure your organization can respond quickly and compliantly when incidents occur.

We evaluate your current incident response capabilities by working with stakeholders across security, legal, engineering, and communications teams. Our assessment covers your response plans, notification procedures, and escalation paths while analyzing your specific regulatory and contractual obligations for breach notifications. We can also help establish realistic disaster recovery and business continuity plans to ensure the resiliency and longevity of your company.

Contract Review and Transactional Support

Data processing agreements, vendor contracts, and business partnerships often contain critical privacy and data protection provisions that can significantly impact your compliance posture and liability exposure. Our contract review services help you identify and address data protection risks in your commercial relationships before they create operational or legal challenges.

We review and negotiate data processing addendums, information security agreements, privacy clauses, and cross-border transfer mechanisms in vendor agreements, customer contracts, and partnership deals. Our analysis covers controller-processor relationships, data subject rights, breach notification obligations, and international transfer requirements under applicable regulations. We also provide guidance on M&A transactions involving data-intensive businesses, helping you conduct privacy due diligence and structure deals that account for data protection compliance requirements.

Why Choose Our Privacy Practice

End-to-end lifecycle support. Whether you’re in the early stages of product development, facing a regulatory audit, or responding to a security incident, we provide consistent guidance throughout your privacy journey.
Deep technical expertise rooted in our technology-focused practice. As a law firm built to serve the needs of technology companies, we bring a deep understanding of the software, systems, and data infrastructure that power today’s digital businesses. Our extensive patent work in software and security—including advising leading global cybersecurity providers—gives us a practical foundation for evaluating privacy risks and designing compliance strategies. This technical fluency allows us to deliver legal advice that fits seamlessly with how your organization builds and deploys technology.
Current with emerging standards and best practices. Our practitioners are active in technical, cybersecurity, and data protection communities and collaborate with outside technical experts, ensuring our recommendations reflect current best practices rather than outdated compliance checklists.

The Lee & Hayes Philosophy

We speak tech, think business, and breathe innovation.

At Lee & Hayes, we’re more than attorneys—we’re technologists, entrepreneurs, and trusted advisors at the intersection of law, business, and emerging technologies. Our team includes professionals with technical and business degrees, and decades of experience breaking down complex software and AI systems for companies ranging from disruptive startups to global industry leaders. We understand the technology because we’ve helped build it, explain it, and protect it.

It’s in our DNA—powering how we guide clients through the legal frameworks that govern innovation, brand protection, and competitive advantage.

Whether it’s IP strategy, data privacy, or AI governance, we combine legal depth with technical fluency to deliver advice that’s not only sound, but strategically actionable. We believe in emerging technologies’ potential to continue to improve the world—and we help businesses harness it responsibly. While others may hesitate in the face of complexity, we bring clear, forward-looking guidance grounded in real-world experience.

Above all, we think like businesspeople. Many of us are founders ourselves, and we’ve helped companies grow from seed-stage to unicorn status by aligning legal strategies with commercial outcomes. We know what matters to innovators: speed, clarity, and advice that drives business forward.