Melissa Siebert

Practice Areas

Melissa is the chair of Cozen O'Connor's Emerging Data Privacy Trends practice. She and her team represent clients nationwide in privacy and data-related class actions, “mass” and individual arbitrations, and individual litigation in federal and state courts, including cases involving Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), Genetic Information Privacy Act (GIPA), the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), the Driver Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) and the recent nationwide surge in class action litigation involving pixel-based claims, cookies, and website analytics, SDKs, and software applications. The team is at the forefront of defending litigation based on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and has a thriving AI Litigation sub practice. The team also handles complex data breach litigation. Melissa and her team also provide significant privacy-related compliance counseling and regulatory advice.

Melissa is well-regarded as an adept predictor of emerging privacy litigation trends and is a trusted advisor to clients and insurers based on her ability to develop creative and successful defenses to emerging privacy litigation, and where warranted, to obtain defense-favorable settlements. She is a frequent speaker regarding emerging privacy litigation.

Melissa's experience handling BIPA cases has made her one of the leading lawyers in the rapidly developing area of emerging privacy litigation. She has argued and won some of the most significant BIPA appeals to date, garnering defense victories before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. These landmark wins are recognized as laying the groundwork for one of the few clear paths to victory for BIPA defendants.

Education