Regulatory Consulting at WilmerHale (Policy Practice)

Overview

WilmerHale is a major international law firm — roughly 1,000 lawyers across 12 offices in the U.S., Europe, and Asia — and a recognized thought leader on AI legal issues, providing full-service coverage to clients using, developing, or acquiring AI-driven products. Its AI practice spans intellectual property counseling and litigation, cybersecurity and privacy, government-facing investigations and enforcement, and corporate transactions, and it has advised clients ranging from startups to the world’s largest consulting firms since ChatGPT’s release. For an AI-policy audience, WilmerHale’s value is that it tracks where AI governance stops being aspirational and becomes enforceable: FTC Section 5 actions against companies overstating AI capabilities, state attorney-general investigations, privacy litigation testing how existing law applies to AI training data, and export controls on AI models. The firm publishes an unusually granular stream of client alerts on these developments — including analysis of the Commerce Department’s ‘Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion’ and its export controls on closed-weight AI models and large semiconductor clusters — making it a practical bellwether for how the AI regulatory landscape is actually being policed rather than merely debated.

AI-Focused Regulatory Work

WilmerHale’s 2026 output captures a genuine inflection: the shift, as its analysts frame it, from AI hype to AI accountability. Its ‘Year in Review: 2025 Artificial Intelligence-Privacy Litigation Trends’ documents how federal and state enforcers intensified scrutiny through the year — the FTC bringing multiple Section 5 unfair-or-deceptive-conduct actions against companies accused of overstating their AI products’ capabilities, seeking injunctions, monetary relief, and in at least one case a permanent ban on offering AI-related services, alongside distributing more than $15 million over allegations that a developer using AI tools stored, used, and sold consumer information without knowledge. The firm’s state-level tracking is equally sharp: its ‘State AG Enforcement Action: Priorities for 2026’ notes that bipartisan coalitions of state attorneys general wrote to congressional leaders in May and November 2025 urging rejection of federal moratoria on state AI laws — arguing that fast-evolving technologies require agile regulatory responses — while states like Texas moved ahead with the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act, effective January 1, 2026. On the governance side, WilmerHale partners Jessica Lewis and Joshua Geltzer contributed to EqualAI’s ‘AI Governance Playbook for Boards,’ arguing that AI governance has become a legal and strategic imperative and that boards prioritizing governance structures and AI literacy will be better positioned to meet Delaware oversight standards and fiduciary obligations. For anyone building an AI-policy directory, WilmerHale is the firm that shows what happens after the policy debate ends and the enforcement begins.

Notable AI Policy Work

• Published ‘Year in Review: 2025 Artificial Intelligence-Privacy Litigation Trends,’ documenting FTC Section 5 actions against companies overstating AI capabilities — including injunctions, monetary relief, a permanent ban on offering AI services, and $15M+ distributed over AI-related consumer-data allegations.
• Tracks state enforcement in ‘State AG Enforcement Action: Priorities for 2026,’ covering bipartisan state-AG opposition to federal AI preemption moratoria and new state laws such as the Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act (effective Jan 1, 2026).
• Analyzes federal AI export controls, including the Commerce Department’s ‘Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion’ restricting closed-weight AI model exports and large semiconductor clusters used to train models.
• Partners Jessica Lewis and Joshua Geltzer contributed to EqualAI’s ‘AI Governance Playbook for Boards,’ framing AI governance as a fiduciary and Delaware-oversight obligation for directors.
• Advises on AI intellectual property — infringement risk and IP rights for generative AI use cases, source-code review in acquisitions — and represents clients in government investigations involving AI, synthetic media, and deepfakes.
• Publishes ongoing assessments of the administration’s AI regulatory approach and hosts practitioner briefings on state privacy and AI laws, enforcement trends, and compliance strategy.

Thought Leadership

1. Year in Review: 2025 AI-Privacy Litigation Trends
   Documents how FTC and state enforcers tested existing privacy and consumer-protection law against AI in 2025, including Section 5 actions over overstated AI capabilities.
2. State AG Enforcement Action: Priorities for 2026
   Tracks bipartisan state-AG resistance to federal AI preemption and new state AI statutes, including the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act effective January 2026.
3. Assessing Throughlines in the Administration’s AI Regulatory Approach
   Analyzes the Commerce Department’s AI Diffusion Framework — export controls on closed-weight models and the semiconductor clusters needed to train them.
4. WilmerHale — Artificial Intelligence practice
   The firm’s full-service AI practice spanning IP, privacy and cybersecurity, enforcement defense, and AI-related transactions.

Clients

Serves clients from startups to the largest global consulting firms on AI matters — IP counseling and litigation, privacy and cybersecurity, government investigations, and M&A diligence. Roughly 1,000 lawyers across 12 offices in the U.S., Europe, and Asia; specific client engagements are largely confidential.