Adrienne E. Fowler

Adrienne Fowler helps communications and tech companies navigate the maze of federal, state, and international regulations related to consumer protection, privacy, and data security.  She helps these clients develop comprehensive regulatory strategies.  She also counsels other law firms on preventing, planning for, and responding to data security incidents affecting confidential client data.

She regularly:

• Counsels clients on how to integrate regulatory compliance into their business models
• Helps set up comprehensive corporate regulatory compliance programs, including comprehensive data protection policies incorporating principles from the GDPR, FTC Act, HIPAA, GLBA, CPNI rules, U.S. state law, and other data protection regimes
• Advises in matters involving the accessibility of technology for individuals with disabilities
• Helps to shape the regulatory landscape through advocacy before government agencies
• Assesses regulatory risks during mergers and acquisitions and in contract negotiations
• Responds to government demands for personally identifiable or sensitive information about clients, their customers, and their employees
• Advises clients regarding the protection of trade secret information and personal data
• Responds to government investigations and litigation involving alleged regulatory compliance failures

Adrienne takes an expansive perspective on clients’ consumer protection, privacy, and data security regulatory strategies, based on extensive experience with the consumer protection arms of a wide variety of regulators and enforcement agencies, in the U.S. and abroad.  Before entering private practice, Adrienne was a trial attorney in DOJ’s Consumer Protection Branch, where she received a special commendation for outstanding service.  She handled high-profile regulatory enforcement cases, including securing the entry of the then-largest civil penalty in a privacy-related Federal Trade Commission enforcement action; defending the Food and Drug Administration after the agency removed a controversial medical device from the market; negotiating a consent decree that reshaped how one of the nation’s largest debt buyers collects old debts; negotiating the first governmental consent decree that included wide-ranging injunctive relief for alleged reporting violations under the Consumer Product Safety Act; and criminally prosecuting individuals and corporations who committed large-scale telemarketing and Internet-based consumer fraud.

Adrienne is an American Bar Association representative to the Uniform Law Commission’s Study Committee on Online Data Privacy.  She also currently serves as Symposium Chair for the ABA’s Forum on Communications Law.  She is a certified privacy professional (CIPP/US), and Super Lawyers has ranked her as a “Rising Star” in D.C. for each of the past three years.  Adrienne received her J.D. from the University of Michigan, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Law Review.