Ann Bevitt

Ann’s two key and complementary practice areas, employment and privacy, focus on helping companies manage two of their most important business assets – their employees and their data.

Ann’s employment practice covers all aspects, both contentious and noncontentious, of employment law and employment-related matters. On the noncontentious side, she focuses on counselling clients throughout the employment life cycle, from the cradle (hiring) to the grave (firing). Ann also advises clients on employment issues arising out of international reorganisations, outsourcings, insolvencies, and mergers and acquisitions. Her contentious work includes the enforcement of restrictive covenants and handling claims arising during and on termination of employment.

In her privacy practice, Ann assists clients with privacy and data security compliance and risk management, and she advises on issues such as effecting data transfers, drafting privacy policies, conducting electronic marketing, monitoring employees, dealing with eDiscovery, undertaking internal investigations (domestic and cross-border), responding to data subject requests and notifying breaches.

Ann works with clients, including multinationals, large corporations, governments and individual senior executives, from industry sectors such as technology, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, banking and financial services, venture capital and private equity, insurance, hotel and leisure, music, and recruitment and employment.

Ann has rights of audience in all civil courts and significant experience as an advocate. She was called to the bar in 1992 and practiced as a barrister with a focus on employment law for seven years before qualifying as a solicitor in 2000.

Ann has appeared on the BBC’s ‘World Business Report’ discussing data transfers. She also regularly writes for legal and human resources publications, including the Financial Times, City A.M., Management Today and Personnel Today. She is co-author of ‘A Guide to Hiring and Firing in Europe’ and a contributing author to ‘Employee Privacy: Guide to US and International Law, Trade Secrets, and Sale and Supply of Goods and Services’ and ‘A Practical Guide to UK and EU Data Protection Law’.

Ann leads Cooley’s UK employment practice which is ranked in The Legal 500 UK (2024). Ann also is personally ranked for her employment work in Chambers & Partners UK (2024) and for her privacy work in The Legal 500 UK (2024), and she is described as ‘very knowledgeable’ and ‘demonstrating noteworthy strengths in the life sciences and tech sectors’. Ann also is ranked as a thought leader in Who’s Who Legal (2024).

Select publications

• Author, ‘DSARs: Are the Courts Flexing Their Muscles (Again)?’, PDP Journals, March 2021
• Quoted, ‘Roundtable: What You Really Need to Know About Data Protection in H2 2020’, The Lawyer, November 2020
• Quoted, ‘BA Breach Penalty Sets New GDPR Precedents’, ComputerWeekly.com, October 2020
• Quoted, ‘BA Fine for Data Breach in 2018 Sharply Reduced’, Financial Times, October 2020
• Quoted, ‘Employee-Monitoring in Europe Comes Under Spotlight After H&M Fine’, The Wall Street Journal, October 2020
• Quoted, ‘GDPR Compliance Codes on the Horizon’, Data Economy, June 2020
• Quoted, ‘GDPR One Year On: What Has HR Learnt?’, HR Magazine, June 2019
• Quoted, ‘How to Fix Employee Gagging Clauses’, Financial Times, February 2019
• Co-author, ‘GDPR and AML – A Perfect Pair?’, Money Laundering Bulletin, August 2018
• Co-author, ‘GDPR Governance: How Much Is Enough?’, Strategic Risk, January 2018
• Co-author, ‘Handling SARs Now and After May’, PDP Journals, January 2018
• Author, ‘Getting Privacy Policies GDPR-Ready’, Thomson Reuters Practical Law, November 2017 
• Author, ‘Employee “Consent” Under the GDPR’, Thomson Reuters Practical Law In-House Blog, August 2017
• Co-author, ‘Preparing for the GDPR – Advice for Employers’, PDP Journals, June 2017
• Co-author, ‘GDPR: The Good, the Not So Bad and the Opportunities’, Information Age, May 2017 
• Co-author, ‘The Risks With Data Profiling’, PDP Journals, January 2017
• Co-author, ‘Seven Key Data Protection New Year’s Resolutions Companies Should Be Making’, PDP Journals, January 2016
• Author, ‘Challenges With Workplace Wearables in the EU and US’, PDP Journals, October 2015

Speaking engagements

• Speaker, ‘Thought Leaders in Privacy: Ann Bevitt’, OneTrust DataGuidance interview, October 2019
• Speaker, ‘Preparing for and Embracing GDPR to Drive Your Business Forward’, Thomson Reuters GC Leadership Summit, June 2017
• Panelist, ‘Workplace Transformation: How to Build Workspaces to Support a New Generation of Mobile Workers’, V3 Enterprise Mobility Summit panel discussion, February 2015   
• Panelist, ‘Implementing the Lessons Learned From Recent Data Breaches’, 14th Annual Data Protection Compliance Conference panel discussion, October 2015