McDermott Will & Emery offices in Washington, D.C. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

A co-leader of Baker & Hostetler's blockchain technologies and digital currencies team has joined McDermott Will & Emery in Washington, D.C., as McDermott looks to expand its global privacy and cybersecurity practice.

Laura Jehl, who joined McDermott last week, will serve as the global head of the firm's privacy and cybersecurity practice, which has 69 lawyers worldwide. The firm is hoping to boost those numbers in the near future, Jehl added.

"We are actively looking and engaging in conversations with some really great and talented lawyers," Jehl said. "I think the firm is really committed to growing the practice. They see it as being integral to all of their clients. We want to make sure we meet all of those needs. Part of my job, as soon as I walked in the door, was recruiting and looking at some other folks they have in the pipeline."

Jehl indicated that the firm is elevating the practice—and its ability to handle clients' data privacy and cybersecurity issues—with her promotion. Before she left Baker & Hostetler, McDermott's practice was informally run by three partners: Daniel Gottlieb in Chicago, Michael Morgan in California and Mark Schreiber in Boston.

It's easier for the firm to strategize with and market its practice group with one person as opposed to three, Jehl said.

Jehl joined the firm last week. Gottlieb, Morgan and Schreiber remain at the firm.

Besides her blockchain leadership role at Baker & Hostetler, Jehl was also co-head of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) initiative there and was a member of its privacy and data protection practice.

Jehl is bringing a number of clients with her from Baker & Hostetler. She declined to identify them but said they cover a wide range of industries, including social media, technology and other kinds of retailers.

Jehl said her clients are doing business with an ever-increasing volume of data and are also facing an ever-increasing number of regulations, citing the European Union's GDPR, California's Consumer Privacy Act and other data privacy laws in Brazil and China. What frustrates her clients is the fact that it's very hard to come up with one data privacy standard that covers all of the different regulations at once because the laws don't align, Jehl said.

"My clients come to me and say, 'what do we do? … Can we do one thing most efficiently, even if it's as strict as they come? Can we do one thing to address our privacy and data security obligations around the world?' And the answer right now is, kind of, no," Jehl said.

Jehl previously served as the general counsel and chief privacy and security officer at Resolution Health, a subsidiary of Anthem, "where she led the management of one of the nation's largest reported healthcare data breaches which involved the personal information of 80 million people," McDermott touted in an announcement Thursday.

Jehl was also the vice president and chief litigation counsel at America Online, where "she played a critical role in precedent-setting internet law and privacy matters," the firm added.

McDermott chairman Ira Coleman said in the release that Jehl has "been on the front lines and she's been in the boardroom." The firm also noted that Jehl is the 14th woman partner to join McDermott in 2019.

"Cybersecurity and privacy issues are at the top of every CEO's agenda—and our team is on the front lines every day, not only in responding to issues but, more importantly, partnering with our clients to stay ahead of them," Coleman added.

Baker & Hostetler did not respond to a request for comment on Jehl's departure from the firm.