Skip Links

Music

Favorite Game

Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS

Desired Superpower

Desired Superpower

Flight

Cups of Coffee

Cups of Coffee

4

How I Get To Work

Boat

Quick Facts

Law School

University of Michigan Law School

Favorite Legal Movie

My Cousin Vinny

Who would play you in a movie?

Neil Patrick Harris

Curriculum Vitae

AARON LAWSON is a Partner in Edelson PC’s Issues & Appeals group, where he leads the firm’s AI & Emerging Technologies unit, a team dedicated to the legal questions that new technologies are generating faster than courts can answer them. The unit handles briefing, legal strategy, and appellate work across the firm’s docket of cutting-edge matters, including its mass tort cases against AI companies, its public client work on social media addiction, gambling addiction, and AI, and the next wave of cases testing how existing law applies to technologies that did not exist when that law was written.

That assignment reflects the arc of Aaron’s career. Since joining Edelson PC in 2015, he has spent more than a decade litigating questions of first impression against technology companies in trial and appellate courts across the country. He has argued in five federal courts of appeals, state appellate courts, and state supreme courts, and has briefed issues in numerous trial and appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. His work has helped establish foundational precedents in biometric privacy, digital-harm standing, and technology accountability law.

In addition to his work at the firm, Aaron previously served on the executive committee of the California Lawyers Association’s Privacy Law Section, and for several years edited the section’s annual treatise. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and symposia. Representative speaking engagements include participation in a panel discussion on “Hot Topics in Privacy Litigation” at the Privacy Law Section’s 2025 Privacy Law Summit in Los Angeles, a panel discussion on employee privacy at the ABA’s National Symposium on Technology in Labor and Employment Law in 2024, a panel discussion entitled “Privacy Law in the Courts: Updates on Class Action Developments from Both Sides of the Aisle” at the 2023 Privacy Law Summit, a panel discussion entitled “Biometrics Are Back (And So Are the Lawsuits)” at the ABA’s Labor and Employment Law Conference in 2022, and a presentation on “The Continued Uncertainty over Article III Standing” at the “Litigating Class Actions” conference held in Seattle in 2019.

Before joining the firm, Aaron spent two years as a Staff Attorney for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 

  • Tumbler Ridge Shooting Litigation (N.D. Cal.): Represents the families and survivors of the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in wrongful death and personal injury suits against OpenAI and Sam Altman, among the first cases in the U.S. seeking to hold an AI company accountable for a mass tragedy.
  • In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation, 326 F.R.D. 535 (N.D. Cal. 2018), aff’d, 932 F.3d 1264 (9th Cir. 2019): One of the first cases ever brought under Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, litigated when every issue in the case was a blank slate: standing, extraterritoriality, class treatment. Helped win the first-ever certification of a BIPA class and then defended both certification and Article III standing in the Ninth Circuit, paving the way for a $650 million settlement, among the largest privacy settlements in history.
  • Wakefield v. ViSalus, Inc., 51 F.4th 1109 (9th Cir. 2022): Successfully defended one of the largest jury verdicts on record in a privacy case. Matter remanded on grounds unrelated to the defendant’s liability.
  • Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330 (2016), on remand, 867 F.3d 1108 (9th Cir. 2017): One of the defining cases on when privacy violations constitute real-world harm. The litigation, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court, helped shape the modern framework for standing in privacy cases and established that intangible injuries from the misuse of personal data can open the federal courthouse doors.
  • Eichenberger v. ESPN, Inc., 876 F.3d 979 (9th Cir. 2017): Litigated jurisdictional and interpretive questions of first impression under the Video Privacy Protection Act, a statute written for the video rental era, as applied to streaming apps. The Ninth Circuit’s decision established that the unlawful disclosure of a consumer’s video viewing data is itself a concrete injury, a holding that strengthened plaintiffs’ ability to bring privacy claims in federal court.
  • McDonald v. Symphony Bronzeville Park, LLC, 2022 IL 126511: Persuaded the Illinois Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, that employees’ biometric privacy claims are not preempted by the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act, eliminating a defense that had stalled BIPA cases statewide and clearing the path for workers across Illinois to vindicate their privacy rights.
  • In re Flock Group, Inc. Automated License Plate Reader Litigation (N.D. Cal.): Represents a putative class challenging mass surveillance by automated license plate readers under California law, part of the emerging body of litigation over AI-powered surveillance technologies.
  • Doe v. Roblox Corp., 602 F. Supp. 3d 1243 (N.D. Cal. 2022): In a case alleging that the defendant metaverse operator deleted in-game items owned by minor users to induce further purchases, persuaded the district court to deny the defendant’s motion to dismiss in part, on the novel ground that the user-plaintiff’s age was relevant to whether the user was on notice of the terms of service. 
  • “The Continued Uncertainty Over Article III Standing,” 2019 Litigating Class Actions Conference
  • Rethinking Healthcare Data Breach Litigation, Competition: The Journal of the Antitrust, UCL and Privacy Section of the California Lawyers Association, Vol. 27 (Winter 2017-18) (with Jay Edelson)
  • Educational Federalism, 2013 B.Y.U. Educ. & L.J. 281 (2013)
  • State of Illinois
  • State of California

Prior to joining Edelson PC, Aaron served for two years as a Staff Attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Aaron graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, where he served as a Managing Editor for the Michigan Journal of Race & Law.

Back to All Team Members