Sarah Bruno

Bruno started handling privacy, advertising and intellectual property cases when she joined Arent Fox LLP.

“That was in part because I was the low man on the totem pole,” Bruno said.

No one could have foreseen the practice’s growth, she explained.

“So if a client had a question about a website that was collecting information, that would land on my desk because it seemed like the least important question,” Bruno said. “That was back in 2003.”

More companies have become concerned about cyber threats and now Bruno leads Arent Fox’s Privacy, Cybersecurity & Data Protection group. She is regularly called for major data incident response, breach prevention, and regulatory strategy where data security issues intersect with advertising and intellectual property matters.

Mars Inc., Benefit Cosmetics, Snapfish, SoftBank Robotics Corp, Kabam, FoxNext and Forever 21 are a handful of her clients.

“One of the things that makes my practice a lot of fun is the varied industries that I work within,” Bruno said. “Softbank is a good example just because of the [artificial intelligence] and the technology component of what they do. So that’s one side of the coin and then on the other is I have these fun, consumer products clients...”

There are some commonalities among her clients, even though the may operate in different sectors.

“The problems faced by each are similar in the sense they both rely on customer interaction and data in order to fuel sales and generate better products for customers but they have different kinds of customer bases and strategies, so it’s fun.”

Helping clients work through challenges is one of the best parts of her job, Bruno said.

“The interaction with people has always been the biggest draw. Working with like-minded people and solving problems is still kind of my favorite part,” she said. “I’m lucky that will never change, because that’s the essence of being a lawyer — tackling problems.”

– Skylar Dubelko