James G. Snell Partner

Jim is a Chambers-ranked lawyer who guides companies through privacy, technology, intellectual property, and complex commercial matters and disputes.

Jim Snell’s extensive experience includes guiding high-growth startups and industry leaders, such as the Rocket Mortgage family of companies, Facebook, Toyota, Microsoft, and Levi Strauss, in matters involving internet, privacy, and security issues. These include state and federal wiretap laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the Stored Communications Act (SCA), and the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA); the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and related state laws; the Telephone Consumer Protection (TCPA) and related state laws; artificial intelligence and machine learning matters; web scraping matters; the Communications Decency Act (CDA); the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) and related laws; and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

In litigation, Jim defended the first lawsuit filed under the CAN-SPAM Act and the first lawsuit filed under Michigan’s Child Protection Registry. He represented Microsoft in one of the first cases filed related to artificial intelligence and machine learning in the late 1990s. He has prevailed for clients on appeal and before the California Supreme Court on novel issues under the SCA (for example, in Facebook v. Superior Court, (Hunter) and Facebook v. Touchstone), and prevailed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Borden v. eFinancial, which established favorable TCPA law in the Ninth Circuit regarding the definition of autodialer, and in (Goussev v. Toyota), where the Court affirmed dismissal of state wiretap claims against Toyota. He also regularly represents clients in regulatory investigations related to state privacy laws and other matters.

Jim also helps clients reduce legal risk by advising on industry best practices. California-specific laws are a focus of his practice.

Jim serves as the office managing partner of the firm’s Palo Alto office. He has co-chaired the Practing Law Institute’s (PLI’s) Privacy and Cybersecurity Law Insitute (SF) and Tech Law Institute (SF and NY) for many years. He is a Certified Information Privacy Professional as designated by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) and has served as a co-chair of IAPP’s San Francisco Bay Area Knowledgenet program.