Danielle Van Lier

Danielle Van Lier is an intellectual property, technology, and transactional attorney and consultant with special expertise in artificial intelligence and its impact on creative professionals, as well as the right of publicity and name, image, likeness and voice rights, generally. 

Prior to starting her solo practice, Ms. VanLier advanced through roles of increasing challenge and complexity in SAG-AFTRA’s legal department, most recently holding the position of Senior Assistant General Counsel, Contracts and Compliance. In that role Danielle was responsible for ensuring compliance with various regulatory schemes, including online privacy, and was SAG-AFTRA’s lead corporate transactional and intellectual property attorney.

During her time at SAG-AFTRA, Danielle was recognized as an internal expert and resource on emerging technologies, particularly generative AI, and had an integral role in several AI-related issues, including the union’s 2023 contract negotiations and its first contracts with AI companies. She also played a leading role in the creation of many of SAG-AFTRA’s innovative contracts addressing new technologies including its Influencer Agreement, Podcast Agreement, Microbudget Project Agreement, and the recent Tiered-Budget Interactive Media Agreement. 

Ms. Van Lier is an adjunct professor at three Los Angeles-area law schools – USC Gould School of Law, Loyola Law School, and Southwestern Law School – where she teaches classes on the legal issues arising from AI in the entertainment and media industries and the entertainment industry guilds.

Danielle is a sought-after speaker and has delivered presentations to global audiences on topics that include artificial intelligence, deepfakes, rights of publicity, copyright, and the entertainment guilds. She has spoken on numerous panels at bar association conferences, industry-specific events (including at San Diego Comic-Con and CES). She is also the author of the AI chapter in Entertainment Law: Legal Concepts and Business Practices, published by Thomson Reuter.

Ms. VanLier earned her J.D. from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. She returned to graduate studies in 2016, earning an LLM in Innovation, Technology, and the Law through the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and an MBA from Oxford Brookes University in the UK. She also holds a B.A. in Japanese Language, Literature and Cultural Studies from UC Santa Barbara and still speaks conversational Japanese.