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law Times • July 11, 2011 An online resource 1.800.263.3269 Focus On LEGAL SPECIALISTS & BOUTIQUES Privacy lawyers face constant changes Practice area never boring, but new laws keep practitioners busy BY ROBERT TODD Law Times almost daily headlines of success- ful database hacks and breaches of users' rights to having their in- formation kept private. Th e con- cern for the protection of these rights has kept lawmakers and privacy commissioners busy and thereby kept people like Bonnie Freedman up at night. "You don't sleep a lot and P you read a lot," says the regional leader of Borden Ladner Ger- vais LLP's Toronto privacy and access-to-information group in summing up her experience in this area of practice. She notes that privacy law's roots trace back to long before the explosion of electronic documents and communica- tion but she agrees that those types of technologies now con- sistently drive the area of prac- tice into unforeseen places. "Because of the dynamism with which information tech- nology changes, it's an area of the law that's perpetually in motion," she says. "Th at makes it intellectually very interesting. It's what I love about it. I love that there's not just one way to look at a situ- ation. You have to characterize the roles of the parties, you have to understand the data fl ows, and you have to basically do an analysis of every situation. It's not like you can just pick this up and go with it." Freedman notes that privacy law issues have become particu- larly relevant in the health-care and fi nancial services sectors where databases are built and populated with massive volumes of personal information. She adds that the provinces are moving, if they haven't done so already, to creating specifi c leg- islation for the handling of per- sonal health information. David Young, a member of McMillan LLP's privacy law group, explains that this area of practice has a lot of what he calls "ancillary connections." He con- tinues on that thought by adding that privacy law "relates to other areas of life, really, and law." His bridge into this area of practice came from his previ- ous concentration on advertising and marketing law. Young notes that contemporary privacy law often deals with issues surround- ing the commercial exploitation of personal information. "Th e whole mantra today, if 'You don't sleep a lot and you read a lot,' says Bonnie Freedman. you think of the Internet and the issues of privacy on the Internet, is advertisers, promoters, com- panies looking to sell products and wanting to fi nd out about their customers," he says. "It was a logical morph, quite frankly, from the advertising-marketing general fi eld down to the more specifi c one of privacy." Meanwhile, the former chair- man of the Canadian Bar Asso- ciation's privacy and access law section says he has learned how important it is for privacy law practitioners to be willing and able to liaise with members of other practice groups and expand their own legal knowledge base. "You're never going to get a client that just has a very nar- row privacy issue," says Young. "Th ey're going to be related to marketing law issues, IT issues broadly . . . so you've got to know those areas." "You need to be able to do the rest of that stuff because if you just narrowly excluded those is- sues, got somebody else to deal with all of that stuff , you might not have as much challenge or volume of work," he adds. And while privacy law law- yers are rarely bored, Freedman notes that it can be extremely time-consuming to stay ahead of the game. "You've got a rapidly chang- ing area of the law, you have many pieces of applicable legis- lation and so you have to have enough time to invest to track all that's going on," she says. "It's not only changes in the legislation but the interpreta- tion of the commissioners, the interpretation of the courts." Untitled-4 1www.lawtimesnews.com Th at means privacy law can be a diffi cult area in which to practise if your goal is the pro- duction of a high volume of bill- able hours. Th ere simply isn't enough time to keep up with changes in the law and there- fore be in a position to provide sound advice to clients. "Th at's the challenge of it: making it work given the amount of work you need to do to keep up to date," says Freedman. She spends plenty of time rivacy law has become one of the most dynamic areas of legal practice with on various privacy commis- sioners' web sites to keep track of their latest rulings in addi- tion to several blogs not only in Canada but across the globe that include relevant content. Yet for lawyers at law fi rms, the amount of daily research time required can create confl ict in terms of meeting partners' profi t expectations. For sole practitioners, it can make it dif- fi cult to make ends meet. With this in mind, Freed- man notes the irony of practising in this specialty area: the ever- changing nature of the law that's so intellectually stimulating also creates time demands that can threaten fi nancial viability. But that leads her to what she views as another upside to practis- ing privacy law: it's very much in line with what's being preached on the topic in academia. "Th ere are areas where what people are studying in law schools and writing about in universities is not necessarily directly appli- cable to getting through on a day- to-day basis. Th ere's lots of legal theory and all this sort of thing. "It's actually one of the things See Practitioners, page 12 You may know us for ip litigation, but our prosecution team has been making some waves of its own. Dimock Stratton is pleased to announce that Mark B. Eisen has won the International Law Office Client Choice Award for 2011. ilo Client Choice Award winners are chosen through an extensive survey of over 2,000 senior corporate counsel worldwide. The survey identifies the practitioners whose excellent client care and quality of service provides real value above and beyond the other players in the market. Mark was the only Canadian practitioner in the field of intellectual property to win this award. Mark Eisen is Senior Partner of the patent and trademark prosecution group at Dimock Stratton. He is backed by partners Henry Lue, Jenna Wilson and Etienne de Villiers, and a team of associates whose expertise encompasses a wide range of technologies. Contact one of the partners listed above directly, or visit dimock.com to find out more. Dimock Stratton llp experience. results. 20 Queen W. 32nd fl, Toronto | 416.971.7202 | dimock.com 7/5/11 12:08:26 PM PAGE 9