Michelle Reed, co-head of Akin Gump's cybersecurity, privacy and data protection practice, has been quoted in the Bloomberg article 'Lawyers Brace for Virginia Privacy Law Amid California Compliance.' The article looks at how best to prepare for the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, which takes effect in January 2023 and is the second state-level comprehensive consumer privacy law to be passed in the United States.

One of the first steps to a company becoming compliant with Virginia's new consumer privacy law, according to Reed, is understanding whether it falls under the scope of it.

'We have some clients who are already compliant with GDPR,' said Reed, referring to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, 'and some clients already compliant with the [California Consumer Privacy Act]. We have others that don't operate in California and have no presence in Europe and therefore have nothing.'

One aspect of the law calls for businesses to limit the collection of personal information to that which is adequate, relevant, and 'reasonably necessary,' according to the text of the statute. That concept, known as data minimization, may be a daunting task for companies, the article says, since some have been collecting data without a clear plan for shedding it or decreasing future collection.

'Data minimization will likely require a lot of work,' Reed observed. 'On the flip side, privacy policies will have to be modified but can probably be tweaked closer to the implementation date.'

In March, Reed was part of the Akin Gump team that released '2020 CCPA Litigation Report: Trends and Developments,' a report examining the first year of civil litigation related to the California Consumer Privacy Act and previewing what to expect throughout the remainder of 2021 and beyond.