Nicole Beranek Zanon advises her clients in the fields of Swiss and international data protection; IT security and information, technology and communications law, as well as all related matters – especially concerning artificial intelligence and distributed ledger technologies. Nicole is an active board member of Swiss Fintech Ladies; a member of the International Technology Law Association (ITechLaw) and the Swiss Telecommunications Association; and Board Member of the Research Institute for Information Law of the University St Gallen.

On what matters have clients asked you most for advice over the past year? What would you say is driving this?

Outsourcing, cloud projects and Schrems II were the topics requested the most last year. Due to the new Swiss Federal Data Protection Act entering into force my clients get ready to implement the necessary measures. In addition we had a lot of M&A-Transaction in the technology field.

How are continuing calls for increased data privacy affecting your practice at the moment?

The understanding of data protection has vanished and in 2021/2022 most companies had other topics take priority, such as looking for business continuity in these agile times of war, supply chain break ups and following their sustainability goals.

To what extent has the recent passing of the ‘Blockchain Act’ in Switzerland impacted the type of work you have been receiving in this area?

The unserious requests have vanished and we are now working with and for clients with a real business case. For the time being especially NFT Platforms are business models raising up.

What key challenges might younger data lawyers face in their practice and how can they overcome these?

Young lawyers must catch up with the developments in the LegalTech field to stay competitive and find their niche.

What areas of data risk do you see emerging in the next few years?

As technology does evolve and quantum computing is very close, we need new methods to safeguard privacy. Even anonymised data can easily be re-identified with enough context information, especially over time. We should be very aware of the time factor. A sustainable data protection - and Data Governance - is required in our times. The second area of risk is cybercrime as the methods and tools and the economical power of this “industry” evolves.

In your opinion, what does the future of AI in the legal industry look like?

AI will help to replace repetitive, very standardised work or be a supportive tool for lawyers.

What professional challenges are you anticipating throughout the next few years, and how do you intend to navigate them?

Staying ahead with the emerging technology is more and more difficult as complexity raises. We counterfight it with education of our staff.