News & Updates: Data in Practice: California Privacy Regulations and Data Fluency

In California, lots of people have been scratching their heads after the new California Privacy Protection Agency issued its first set of proposed regulations, and entities covered by the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”) struggle to disentangle what they mean and how to comply by the enforcement date of July 1, 2023.

Surprising to some, the CPRA doesn’t just cover the Facebooks, Googles, and Twitters of the world, which we all understand to be profiting from big data. Many smaller businesses, for whom “personal information” is incidental to their bread-and-butter, must now come into compliance or risk enforcement actions from the new state agency.

For lawyers, familiarity with data generally – how it is collected, stored, used, and manipulated – is instrumental to navigating modern regulatory landscapes. But many in our profession lack any background or experience working with data. So, how do we get up to speed?

Learning Excel is a start. Excel isn’t the tool most big companies are using for data analysis. But what learning Excel can do is help attorneys learn the language of data. By working in Excel, users learn how data can be stored, manipulated, and put together – and the terms of art to describe all that. Over time, it provides a path to thinking critically about more advanced issues like data mapping and data aggregation (putting data together), and understanding the complexities of seemingly simple terms like “personal information.”

Take this example: when your client receives a consumer demand for personal information, what might constitute a “disproportionate effort” (defined in the regulations as follows)?

When you’re advising the client, having a basic understanding of how data might “live” on their systems, and being able to talk to them about how they might search for, produce, or delete it, enables you to have meaningful conversations about these amorphous regulations. By speaking this language, you can give them practical guidance, and walk through what a “disproportionate effort” might be in a real-world context. In short, learning Excel, with the practical knowledge and language that you gather along the way, can help form the foundation you need for translating regulations like this one.

Sheet Cheat 

The Sheet Cheat will feature a short excel function or data tool for readers to try out. Please share your favorite cheat via email, and I may include it in a future post!

Learning Excel can be intimidating because it has so many functions. But remember – using software isn’t a memory test! Google is my best friend when it comes to learning new Excel tools, and remembering ones that I’ve purged from my memory bank. Here’s a fun one I always look up: changing dates to days of the week. If you ever have a list of dates (say, in an index of emails), and want to spot a pattern, knowing the day of the week can be extremely helpful. Try this: If the cell with your date is A2, type in your destination cell the following formula – =TEXT(A2, “ddd”). Now, 1/4/2019 will become Fri. Using filters, you can now glance at all those Friday emails together.