General litigation for social media companies requires a broad skill set and offers exciting variation--from privacy to copyright to class action defense to breach of contract.  What does it take to prepare for this type of breadth?

 

More on Kathryn Cahoy and Kanu Song.

 

SPEAKERS

Kanu Song, Wayne Stacy, Kate Cahoy

 

Wayne Stacy  00:01

Welcome, everyone to the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's Expert Series podcast. I'm Wayne Stacy, the Executive Director for BCLT. And today we're focusing on careers in technology. And in particular, we're talking about the types of legal work needed by social media companies. I'm here with two attorneys from Covington that are both leading experts in what I'm going to leave as the teaser here in helping social media companies, but I'm going to let them explain exactly what that means because the phrase carries a lot of different meaning to a lot of different people. So with us, we have Katherine Cahoy, who specializes in complex commercial litigation, including antitrust privacy, and consumer protection, and Kanu Song who specializes in complex commercial litigation, including class actions and consumer protection. So before we talk about generally what the practice looks like in the social media space, I'd love for the two of you to explain just what your practice looks like day to day in the technology field.

 

Kate Cahoy  01:13

Sure, hi, Wayne, I can go first. This is Kate Cahoy. I am a litigator and I have practiced since since I began in private practice in Silicon Valley. So and with a heavy emphasis on tech companies. So I have kind of created my specialization in class action litigation. But there are lots of different types of class action litigation that are prevalent in, in this area and for tech companies in general and social media companies as well. So I have done, you know, the heavy component of privacy type issues that are privacy class actions, anti trust and other types of consumer class actions, things. For example, claims brought under California's unfair competition law, claiming that you know, a statement was misleading on a website or you know, something related to that.

 

Wayne Stacy  02:16

How about you Kanu?

 

Kanu Song  02:18

So I am like a litigator, I am actually in general commercial litigation, most of the time, I'm a generalist by choice. So, I do all kinds of litigation, but because my practice is based in San Francisco, a lot of my clients do tend to be tech companies, including social media companies. And in that space, the substantive work that I've done has been in intellectual property, privacy, class actions, and contract disputes the classic breach of contract, but also like state law claims that's sort of tail off to that.

 

Wayne Stacy  02:54

So maybe, to broaden out a little bit, you know, when people think about social media companies, class actions, and consumer protection, maybe don't come to mind, at least aren't the first thing that that comes to mind. Can you explain a little bit about what those practices look like, for a tech company or a social media type company?

 

Kate Cahoy  03:17

Sure, so I think, you know, for many companies that are growing or, you know, either now are fairly successful, or getting to that point, I mean, class action litigation is sort of a risk and cost of doing business and, and I for a lot of different companies. So I think it's something that that many companies face in, you know, they're some of th