About

I am a lawyer working with companies and organizations to protect their data, their people, and their reputations.

In partnership with key stakeholders in your company, I develop corporate policies and train employees so that everyone understands the groundrules for using social media.

I also work with all levels of corporate staff to evaluate data security and privacy policies and practices, reduce the risk of data breach, and limit the impact of state data breach notification requirements when there is exposure.

I specialize in working with startup companies, companies new to the social media and data security/privacy area, bloggers and social media participants, and K-12 schools and school districts.

I have 15 years experience as a privacy professional, advising clients on data security issues, best practices for management of personally identifiable information, FTC advertising requirements, compliance with law enforcement information requests, civil electronic discovery, state data breach notification requirements, and federal public policy advocacy.

My litigation experience includes appearances before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, State Circuit Court jury trial, federal, state, and tribal court bench trials.

I’m the co-author of 2 books, Privacy in the 21^st Century: Issues for Public, School, and Academic Libraries and the Global Internet Policy Initiative’s Advocacy Training Manual, and a contributor to the book Mothering and Blogging.

I am also an award-winning blogger: My personal blog, LizaWasHere.com won a Weblog Award and is listed on Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop.com; the blog portal I founded, LesbianFamily.org, was nominated for a Bloggie, and EarthLink recognized me as 1 of the bloggers who was “most instrumental” to the success of the now-defunct EarthLink Protection Blog. I am a contributing writer to the Deep South Moms Blog (part of the Silicon Valley Mom Blogs Group). Two of my posts there have been syndicated by MCT and published on major regional news sites. I’m also a former blogger for the personal genetic analysis company and creator of Time Magazine’s 2008 Invention of the Year, 23andMe.com, and a guest blogger at Wired Wisconsin.

Past public speaking engagements include Wired Wisconsin, BlogHer, the American Library Association, American Association of School Librarians, International Society for Technology in Education, Consortium on School Networking, the German political party the Christian Democratic Union (panel chaired by now-Chancellor Angela Merkel), Association of Trial Lawyers of America, and numerous state and local organizations.

I graduated from the University of Wisconsin School of Law and Smith College; I also studied at Reed College. While in law school, I studied abroad at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I studied constitutional law. I became a Certified Information Privacy Professional in 2006.

To contact me, you can email me at lbk (at) privacycounsel.net or call me at 414/712-1048.

Nothing on this blog should be considered legal advice. Unless we have a written agreement, signed by both of us, indicating that I am representing you as your attorney, I am NOT representing you as your attorney.