Natalie Hausknecht is no stranger to high-profile and high-stakes legal matters. But even before she became an attorney, she was familiar with the hot seat.
Before she attended law school, Hausknecht worked as a senior special advisor to President Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq for almost a decade. While she was there, she told Law Week she worked on a host of key international development projects during and after the war.
Hausknecht won a Marshall Scholarship during this time and earned her doctorate in international relations from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and her master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
She spent more than a decade living and working throughout the Middle East and in conflict zones on key stability and infrastructure projects prior to attending Yale Law School.
“Throughout my time at Yale Law School, I represented abused and neglected children as their advocate in proceedings in Connecticut state courts, including in trials where the state was seeking to terminate parental rights,” Hausknecht told Law Week. She noted that it was some of the most rewarding work she’s done as an attorney.
“[It] gave me a chance to give voice to children from infants to teenagers in complex, highly charged court proceedings that had long-lasting consequences for the children,” she said. “Just last week, I received a beautiful high school senior picture from one of the adoptive parents for two of the children that I had the great honor of representing and fighting for over several years.”
“As a mother of five with my own oldest getting ready to head to college this year, I can’t even put into words what it means to see the children I championed in such difficult proceedings come through often horrific starts to their lives to be leaders in their communities with loving, stable homes,” Hausknecht added.
More recently, her courtroom experiences have had the potential to impact the privacy rights of billions of internet users worldwide, according to a spokesperson for Gibson Dunn in Hausknecht’s nomination for Law Week’s Top Women.
The Denver partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has recently led putative consumer class actions on various claims for a client that operates in all 50 states. Hausknecht also co-leads the representation of Meta Platforms in response to several high-profile or precedential Stored Communications Act matters.
Recently, the California Supreme Court agreed to review an appeals decision in Snap., Inc. v. The Superior Court of San Diego County. Hausknecht and the Gibson Dunn team asserted the lower court erroneously held that the SCA does not protect the privacy of users’ online communications when they use Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat.
“Congress enacted the Stored Communications Act as the foundational federal privacy law for online communications in 1986 — 38 years ago,” Hausknecht told Law Week via email. “Congress was particularly concerned as the modern internet was beginning to develop that the significant privacy protections that apply to homes in the physical world may not apply to new ‘virtual homes’ on the internet.”
Hausknecht gave an example of electronic communications that she said were typically stored with service providers. She explained this meant that Congress was worried that the Fourth Amendment protections that existed at the time might not have protected private online communications from disclosure to the government or other parties.
“Congress thus enacted the SCA to set up rules to govern when a service provider could disclose such online communications — thereby protecting privacy and allowing the modern internet we all rely on today to flourish,” Hausknecht explained.
“We are extremely proud of the work we have done with Meta to defend and protect this privacy under the SCA,” Hausknecht said. “In the Republic of Gambia v. Meta case, for example, we secured the first federal holding that the SCA continues to protect communications removed by a service provider for terms-of-service violations — a principle that other courts have since affirmed — and also protects the online communications of foreign users.”
Hausknecht told Law Week that the lower court in the Meta case out of California broke from decades of settled caselaw to hold the SCA doesn’t apply to online communications if users grant a service provider access to those communications for any discrete purpose, like improving their experience or ensuring the service’s safety.
“Because that is true of nearly every online communication service, the [decision] would have annihilated the privacy of billions of communications made every day,” Hausknecht said. “Without the SCA’s privacy shield, virtually anyone could access other’s private online communications.”
Hausknecht regularly handles complex issues related to consumer protection and data privacy. She said this area of the law is emerging from several years of unprecedented changes in response to an explosion of new technologies.
“That breakneck speed shows no signs of abating,” Hausknecht told Law Week. “Quite the opposite, with the Trump administration ushering in new priorities — some of which may be in tension with international and state-level priorities — the next few years promise to bring additional complexity for companies that have to navigate compliance across the U.S. or internationally.”
She noted Colorado and other states have created their own laws to address any perceived federal shortcomings in statutes regulating privacy and artificial intelligence.
“In 2024 alone, seven states enacted new comprehensive privacy laws and four had new laws take effect,” Hausknecht said. “Approximately half the U.S. population will be covered by 2026 by state comprehensive privacy laws, including in Colorado. And Colorado in particular has been on the vanguard in passing new AI legislation, expanding rulemaking authority and generally expanding the reach of its privacy laws.”
Colorado’s new law regulating AI was a first-in-the-nation law passed last year. While it goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2026, the bill’s prime sponsor, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, alongside Gov. Jared Polis and Attorney General Phil Weiser, acknowledged there were still changes needed.
“This growing complexity increasingly requires technology companies to seek counsel able to navigate these tensions, understand state-level requirements and yet also bring a global perspective,” Hausknecht noted.
But she noted working with tech companies is both challenging and rewarding. “It’s this blend of rigorous legal strategy and cutting-edge innovation that makes this work both exhilarating and impactful.”