Lindsay L. Tonsager

San Francisco
Lindsay L. Tonsager is co-chair of Covington's global privacy and cybersecurity practice and she has previously co-chaired the firm's artificial intelligence initiative.
"My AI work grew organically out of my more than a decade experience advising clients on biometric privacy laws," she said. "From there, I realized the skills I had developed helping clients build out and mature their comprehensive privacy governance programs applied more broadly to data governance and the development and deployment of AI technologies."
She said the best education has been learning on-the-job by working with clients who are on the cutting edge of AI technology development.
"I also am fortunate to be able to work with clients who are deploying these technologies across a wide range of industries -- including life sciences, transportation, commerce, connected devices, adtech, and media -- so I've been able to see the many different use cases and ways in which these technologies can benefit consumers," Tonsager said.
While her matters are confidential, Tonsager advises many industry giants on AI matters such as ByteDance/TikTok, Meta (formerly known as Facebook), Microsoft, Nintendo, PBS and American Airlines. Recognized as a leading authority on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), she is also a national authority on children's and teen privacy, including the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the California Age Appropriate Design Code.
In recent years, Tonsager has represented clients in significant non-public enforcement actions by federal and state regulators involving AI technologies. She has also been actively involved in state rulemakings and other proceedings on automated decision-making. While many of these matters are ongoing, some have been successfully resolved, setting precedents for how US federal and state lawmakers and regulators will apply legal frameworks like Section 5, COPPA, and state comprehensive privacy laws to AI technologies for years to come.
"One of the biggest challenges in these matters was interpreting and applying legal definitions and standards that are often overly broad or ambiguous," Tonsager said. "To overcome this challenge, I needed to have a deep understanding of the technologies at issue, of the AI risks and harms that regulators were intending to address, and the original policy purposes and intent of the underlying legal frameworks."
As far as AI trends go, Tonsager said much like the emergence of websites and then mobile apps, the next year or two seem like the tipping point from a few companies being at the forefront of deploying AI to AI becoming a ubiquitous technology.
"It's passe to call oneself an 'internet' or 'digital' lawyer anymore -- soon all lawyers will need to be AI lawyers as well," she said.