Julie O'Neill

Clients seek out Julie O’Neill because of her practical advice on cutting-edge issues at the intersection of privacy and consumer protection laws. Ms. O’Neill provides clients with practical solutions to compliance challenges around a wide variety of both online and offline privacy issues, including online and offline tracking, interest-based advertising, geo-targeting and other mobile tracking, personalization, and cross-device tracking.

Ms. O’Neill also creates compliance programs for clients’ use of a wide variety of channels for communicating with and marketing to consumers, including email, telephone, text message, and fax both in the U.S. and around the world. She works with clients to develop their social media strategies and to clear their social media content, and she is a frequent contributor to Socially Aware (www.mofo.com/sociallyaware), the firm’s award-winning newsletter and blog devoted to the law and business of social media. Ms. O’Neill also reviews advertising in both traditional and new media for compliance with applicable laws, including Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act and various FTC rules and guides. In addition, she works with clients to structure, market and implement their sweepstakes, contests, and other promotions in compliance with applicable laws.

As a former FTC staff attorney, Ms. O’Neill regularly defends companies in investigations by the FTC and before data protection authorities around the world. Some of her representative matters include the representation of:

• A company that creates online software used by schools in an FTC investigation of alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
• A consumer services company investigated by the Korean data protection authority for alleged privacy violations
• An advertising services company in an investigation of alleged privacy-related violations of the FTC Act
• An online provider of entertainment services in an FTC investigation of alleged COPPA violations
• A beverage company in an FTC investigation of alleged COPPA violations

Ms. O’Neill provides clients with creative and practical advice on meeting the requirements of state and federal privacy laws, including the FTC Act, COPPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and state educational privacy laws. She crafts guidelines and compliance programs for clients’ collection, use, and disclosure of personal information in diverse contexts and throughout the life cycle of their initiatives, such as for connected products (the Internet of Things) and mobile services. She also drafts privacy and cookies policies, online service terms of use, agreements involving online and offline advertising and marketing practices, and agreements concerning a variety of data uses. In addition, Ms. O’Neill helps clients to assess and manage privacy risks, including in connection with mergers, acquisitions, and other strategic transactions.

Ms. O’Neill is recommended by Legal 500 US 2016 in the area of marketing and advertising.

Before attending law school, Ms. O’Neill was a Peace Corps volunteer in The Gambia, West Africa.