Rebecca S. Engrav Partner

Rebecca Engrav helps companies that use data solve their highest-stakes privacy, data security, and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) challenges before government regulators and in litigation. She co-chairs Perkins Coie’s Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning industry group.

Rebecca has successfully handled dozens of investigations by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These matters have focused on topics such as data security safeguards, security incidents and data breaches, online advertising practices, accuracy and bias/discrimination risks arising from AI/ML, financial privacy, children’s and teen’s data, and geolocation information. In most of her matters, the government was convinced to take no enforcement action, but she also has negotiated multiple FTC consent orders containing first-of-a-kind provisions that became models for subsequent orders.

Rebecca also has extensive experience defending inquiries by state attorneys general, congress, and other federal, state, local, and foreign government regulators. She has successfully defended complex multistate attorneys general investigations, including resolving a data breach through simultaneous stipulated judgments with all 51 state attorneys general. She also conducts incident response and data breach notifications. Rebecca has developed long-term relationships with the attorneys who handle privacy and data security in many state attorneys general offices, including California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, Texas, and Washington, among others.

In litigation, Rebecca has defended lawsuits brought by state attorneys general and municipalities regarding data breach and data security issues, and she has represented companies as both plaintiff and defendant in B2B disputes arising out of data security incidents. She has represented technology companies in litigation, class actions, and arbitrations regarding terms of use, advertising policies, the arbitrability of claims, contractual issues, consumer protection, wiretapping/eavesdropping, user-generated content, content moderation, statutory and common law privacy claims, and defenses under the First Amendment and the Communications Decency Act (CDA). In a case affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a team led by Rebecca defeated misrepresentation and related consumer protection claims by showing that the output of an algorithm used to publish certain information on a website was a non-actionable opinion.

Rebecca’s deep experience with regulatory and litigation outcomes enables her to provide effective counseling to help proactively manage risk and develop programs and products. She assists companies with governmental order compliance and with development and implementation of internal policies and governance for privacy, data security, AI/ML, and online advertising of restricted products and services.