McDermott Will & Schulte assists international corporations in investigations, defenses against enforcement, privacy litigation and data breach response. The firm’s investigations experience includes those brought by the FTC, OCR, FCC and state attorney generals. Its clientele is broad, with companies from the life science, tech, telecoms, financial services, media and automotive sectors. The team is led by Michael Morgan from Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, advising both on incident response and data monetization. Edward Zacharias, based in Boston, specializes in the healthcare sector as does the Chicago-based Daniel Gottlieb, whose clients include health IT vendors, healthcare providers, health plans, universities and life sciences firms. Joining from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in September 2024, Alexander Southwell works from New York, focusing on litigation and investigation relating to the tech sector. Scott Weinstein  left for an in-house position in April 2024.
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Profile

Profile

Work Department
Privacy, Cybersecurity and Data Innovation
Position

Alex Southwell is one of the nation’s leading technology-focused litigators and investigations lawyers. He is regularly called upon by numerous prominent global companies to counsel on—as well as handle investigations, enforcement defense, and litigation related to—a wide array of privacy, data breach, theft of trade secrets, computer fraud, and network and data security issues, often for the most novel, challenging, or technical matters. A former federal prosecutor, he advises companies victimized by cyber-crimes and has extensive experience with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Economic Espionage Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and Stored Communications Act, and related federal and state statutes, as well as with privacy compliance counseling and FTC and AG regulatory enforcement.

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Key clients

  • Charles Schwab National Spine and Pain Centers Southern Illinois Hospital Services TD Ameritrade

Work highlights

Defended social media giant TikTok against multiple Attorney General lawsuits asserting consumer protection “teen mental health” claims related to the app’s alleged addictiveness.