Cecilia Barnes

President - BC Chapter

Background

Cecilia is Counsel at Lawson Lundell, specializing in Technology Law and Privacy within the Corporate Commercial Group. Her expertise lies in delivering business-centric legal advice to technology companies, aimed at identifying solutions and mitigating risks. Her insights are enriched by her experience as an in-house counsel at leading firms, enabling her to provide comprehensive guidance to a diverse set of technology sector participants, including start-ups, growth-stage companies, entrepreneurs, and investors.

Cecilia’s experience spans various industries, where she has advised clients on business matters, including drafting and negotiating intricate technology-related contracts for the procurement, supply, or distribution of technology subscriptions, licensing, and cloud computing (SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS agreements).

In addition to this, Cecilia offers her expertise to start-ups and scale-ups on a wide array of matters. These include negotiating strategic partnerships, developing legal operations, drafting precedent master agreements, and advising on data security, outsourcing, privacy and compliance programs and policies.

Before joining Lawson Lundell, Cecilia served as the lead commercial lawyer at a rapidly growing company that experienced exponential scaling during her tenure and eventually went public. She also held the position of Director of Legal at a SaaS company operating within a highly regulated industry.

Cecilia is an active member of her community. She is President of the British Columbia Chapter of the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers and has served as director of the Black Female Lawyers Network.