Around the time that Daniel M. Goldberg (JD 2011) started at USC Gould School of Law, new digital media companies, like Netflix and Hulu, were launching their streaming services and online gaming was undergoing a dramatic surge in popularity.
This shift in the entertainment landscape to online platforms appealed to Goldberg, who loved to tinker with computers and play video games when he was a kid in the San Fernando Valley. But these industries were in their infancy and it wasn’t yet clear what type of law would give him the best opportunity to work with these emerging businesses.
“I knew I wanted to have something to do with digital media and technology, but there was no clear career path when I started law school,” Goldberg says. “Issues surrounding privacy and data protection were not being discussed and there weren’t really laws about this, so it wasn’t a big issue for companies yet.”
It took Goldberg a few years after law school to find his way into data security and privacy law, but he was among the first attorneys in California to recognize its significance and build a practice around it. Today, he is widely regarded as one of the country’s leading practitioners in the field and is considered an expert on California’s pioneering privacy laws. He was recently named California Privacy Lawyer of the Year by the Privacy Law Section of the California Lawyers Association.
Goldberg is now a partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz where he chairs the data strategy, privacy and security group. He was hired by the New York-based firm in 2016 to expand their practice area, at a time when many firms had not yet recognized the growing demand for such expertise.
Since becoming a lawyer, Goldberg has worked with hundreds of companies across the country on various aspects of compliance with data privacy laws and regulations. In addition, he also works with clients on data monetization strategies and understanding new risks posed by artificial intelligence.
New legal territory
The main reason law schools didn’t have coursework for the kind of career Goldberg wanted to pursue was that, at the time, there were no laws and regulations surrounding digital rights and online privacy.
Companies were only required to give consumers notice about what they might do with their data. Consent to use or sell their information was implied when customers purchased goods or services from these businesses.
It wasn’t until 2016, the same year Goldberg was hired by Frankfurt Kurnit to build that firm’s data privacy practice, that the regulatory landscape began to change, and governments started to pass laws protecting the personal data of consumers online.
In 2018, the European Union passed the first data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), while California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), protecting both European and California residents’ online privacy. In 2020, California voters approved the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which added protections for sensitive personal information and created the California Privacy Protection Agency to enforce the law.
By the time the first data privacy law went into effect, Goldberg already had a few years of experience working with companies to help them understand and comply with the new regulations. As these laws and their effects on companies doing business online began to unfold, more firms realized they needed to hire lawyers who worked in this area. Being among the first people in California to specialize in this area was helpful, notes Goldberg, because it gave him a leg up on competitors.
These days, law schools offer courses on technology and the unique legal issues tech companies face. But because that was not the case in 2008, he charted his own path by taking intellectual property courses and pursuing internships with Sony’s digital distribution team, Universal Music’s trademark group, and Millrock Entertainment.
“I looked for experiences and courses that I thought would help me understand IT rights and digital media in general, but I didn’t see a clear career path at the time,” Goldberg says.
After graduation, Goldberg worked for a few different firms doing commercial litigation work to get his feet wet. He still hoped to eventually work with digital media companies, but he wasn’t clear how to get a foot in the door until he attended an event held by the Beverly Hills Bar Association about new media in 2013. At that event, he met a partner at BakerHostetler who worked with tech clients on privacy issues and later hired Goldberg as an associate. After a few years, Frankfurt Kurnit hired the pair to build their privacy and data security practice.
“Attending that one event, meeting this woman who was doing what I wanted to do, changed my career completely,” Goldberg says.
An ever-changing environment
Serving his clients well means anticipating change in a rapidly shifting environment.
New regulations and new technology are the main drivers of that change, notes Goldberg. The regulatory landscape in California is already robust, he says, but it continues to change and evolve. One prominent example is the state’s delete request and opt out platform, which allows California residents to submit requests for their personal data to be scrubbed from databases. In August 2026, all data brokers will be required to remove the personal information of people who signed up to be excluded from these databases.
The rise of artificial intelligence is raising new legal questions surrounding the issue of data collection. Even new tech products can have far reaching consequences for other companies. One example, notes Goldberg, is Apple’s new operating system that has new built-in privacy protections that can create difficulties for some users, such as children, trying to access certain sites, such as gaming sites.
“There are some types of law that change little,” notes Goldberg, who is a frequent speaker at industry events and who writes regularly about these issues, “but this is not one of them and in order to do this you have to be open to the fact that it is changing all the time.”
In addition to educating his clients about changes in regulations and new technologies that may affect them, Goldberg also spends much of his professional life helping clients to design and launch new products. He makes sure that these products comply with existing regulations, freeing up his clients to focus on technology and user experience and bringing exciting new products to market.
Though his education is not in an area of technology or computer science, Goldberg says it is important to understand key technology concepts to fully understand where these companies have vulnerabilities in the face of existing and forthcoming regulations.
“You definitely need to be tech-savvy to work in this area,” says Goldberg, who received certifications through the International Association of Privacy Professionals. “In my practice, a lot of that comes from working in the ad tech space. That means understanding the ecosystem and terminology like Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs), cookies and pixels, as well as how those technologies actually function in practice and drive data flows.”
More laws on the horizon
Since California adopted targeted privacy regulations, several states have followed suit. As of right now, 22 states have adopted privacy laws of their own. As the regulatory environment begins to take shape across the country, the first significant legal actions around data security are also being fought.
For example, California sued Sephora Inc. under the CCPA for failing to disclose to consumers that it was selling their personal information and for failing to process user requests to opt out of the sale of their information. That case and others alerted other companies to the seriousness of data privacy infractions.
“There can be very serious consequences for companies that do not comply with these laws,” Goldberg says. In the past few years, according to Goldberg, there has been an influx of lawyers into data security and privacy. Even so, he said there is opportunity for people who are truly interested in the intersection of law and high tech to pursue this type of work.
“This area is hard – you have to be constantly up to date and very organized – and you have to be very flexible and open to change,” Goldberg says. “But for the right person, this is a great area of law and a great community to be part of.”
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