Keily_Blair

Keily Blair

Partner, Orrick

Keily Blair heads up the Cyber, Privacy & Data Innovation Group in London. Keily works with her clients as a "strategic business partner" to navigate privacy and cyber security crises to achieve better commercial, regulatory and judicial outcomes.
Keily's litigation and enforcement background provides her a different perspective on cybersecurity and data privacy issues. She has led the response to investigations by the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office (UK ICO), the Irish Data Protection Commission, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), Parliamentary Select Committees and United States (U.S.) regulators, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Keily has also acted as external legal counsel for privacy and financial service regulators.

On cybersecurity issues, Keily directs cybersecurity incidents and investigations across multiple jurisdictions and incident types from simple business email compromises, to enterprise-wide network intrusions and cyberattacks with national security implications. Keily has worked with national and international law enforcement and is called upon to act as external legal counsel to security and forensics firms when engaging with regulators.

In the civil arena, Keily has led on a number of high profile privacy litigation matters, including civil damages claims and collective actions following personal data breaches and privacy-related judicial reviews. She frequently counsels clients on the growing risk of privacy-related class actions and interventions by privacy advocates in the UK and the European Union.

Keily uses the insights from her litigation and enforcement practice to inform her advisory work, where she regularly advises stakeholders from legal, information security, privacy and the C-suite on a host of privacy and cybersecurity governance, risk mitigation and regulatory engagement strategies. This understanding of what matters to regulators and the courts is at the heart of her approach to privacy advisory and compliance work. According to clients Keily has the "subject matter expertise and ability to understand and interact with companies' culture and capabilities, recognising a one size fits all approach doesn't work".

She is ranked as a key practitioner in data protection, privacy and cybersecurity in The Legal 500 and has represented the private sector at the United Nations and the European Criminal Bar Association. Keily also sits on the Law360's 2020 Editorial Advisory Board on Cybersecurity & Privacy and leads the IAPP Cyber & Privacy Investigations, Enforcement & Litigation Affinity Group. She is committed to improving diversity and social mobility in the legal sector.

Prior to joining Orrick, Keily led the Contentious Data Privacy, Law & Strategy practice at PwC having been a litigator at two international law firms before this.

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