Matthew T. Hays
Member
Matt is a go-to advisor for navigating the ever-evolving, state-by-state regulatory patchwork governing data privacy, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. In an era where every company is a data company, Matt’s ability to transform chaos into actionable compliance frameworks makes him indispensable. With a background in engineering and a registered patent attorney, Matt combines deep technical fluency with sophisticated legal insight. Whether it is analyzing and negotiating key data processing agreements, crafting consumer privacy disclosures, providing product counseling or advising on the development of internal policies and procedures, Matt has the legal knowledge and technical expertise to ensure that your data sensitive project ends with a solution, and not at the problem.
Working primarily with regulated insurance, health, tech and financial services industries, Matt has worked extensively with clients as they wrangle with the explosion of new regulation and adoption of innovative and complicated artificial intelligence driven technologies, including the deployment of generative AI tools.
Matt is a Certified Information Privacy Professional for both the United States and Canada. He has worked extensively with U.S. federal, sectorial and state comprehensive privacy laws, including the CCPA/CPRA, Illinois BIPA, GLBA, NAIC/New York DFS and HIPAA, as well the EU and UK GDPR, Canada’s PIPEDA and provincial laws and other regulatory schemes across the globe.
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- Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, J.D., magna cum laude, Order of the Coif
- University of Cincinnati, B.S., chemical engineering
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Bar Admissions
- Illinois, 2016
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Court Admissions
- U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
- U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
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Selected to Illinois Super Lawyers’ 2025 Rising Stars list
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Named to Best Lawyers' "Ones to Watch" list for Intellectual Property Law, 2022-2024
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- International Trademark Association (INTA), Member
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Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP) U.S.
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Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP) Canada
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Status Check: Support Is Quickly Eroding for the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework
Takeaways After years of litigation, false starts, and invalidated frameworks, the U.S. had finally…
Close Enough Is Not Good Enough When It Comes to Consumers’ Privacy Rights
We’re not playing horseshoes here, folks. It’s time to review your consumer privacy rights forms and…
Privacy Pitfalls in AI: A Closer Look at DeepSeek and Qwen
As AI continues to advance at a rapid pace, two notable foreign players have emerged: DeepSeek and…
