Helen Christakos

Christakos is a counsel in Alston & Bird’s technology and privacy group who leverages her insider’s perspective on enforcement culture and her real-world understanding of industry practices to help companies assess their legal obligations and risks in developing, licensing, selling, acquiring, protecting and commercially exploiting IP and technology assets.

She is lead privacy counsel to network infrastructure provider CommScope Inc. in its $7.4 billion acquisition of ARRIS International PLC, announced in November 2018.

“In any deal like this, I start by getting a sense of the product and services involved. Then I know what stones to look under to see what the pressure points might be,” she said. “Do the companies do data collection on their customers and employees? Is GDPR [the new European data protection law] an issue—as it is in 60 to 70 percent of the transactions I see? You want to be very selective about how you spend your time and the client’s money.”

Christakos is also an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, where she teaches the school’s inaugural cybersecurity law class—an emerging field of legal education that brings Silicon Valley to the classroom.

“I designed the class from scratch,” she said. “I teach M&A, both buyer- and seller-side, security clauses, cyber breaches—soup to nuts.”

In one exercise she lets her students see what law firm cyber lawyering really looks like.

“We get on the phone and I pretend I’m a client who just had a breach. The student has to ask the relevant, critical questions that inform that initial phone call. It emulates what I do in real life.”

Christakos was recruited by Eric Goldman, the prominent internet law and IP professor who directs the school’s High Tech Law Institute.

“Eric was my copyright professor in law school [at UC Berkeley School of Law]. He first suggested I teach licensing. I hired one of his students to work here at Alston. After a while he said, ‘Do you know who might teach cyber?’ I said, ‘I see what you’re doing, Eric. Sure, I’ll teach it.’”

Her inaugural class has 45 students and a waiting list. “It’s a one semester class, but I’ll expand it to two units next year,” Christakos said, “because there’s so much material. The subject is expanding rapidly and there’s a lot of interest.”

Goldman oversees the law school’s privacy law certificate program, but he wanted a separate course on cyber.

“This is Eric’s vision: Privacy and cyber are diverging as subjects,” Christakos said. “I think a lot of schools will agree and soon follow suit.”

– John Roemer