Michael Adler’s practice centers on the question boards and executive teams are now asking: how to deploy enterprise AI safely and at scale across regulated industries. He advises technology companies, private equity and venture investors, and multinational enterprises on AI governance, data protection, and technology transactions, and helps clients design the governance systems that make responsible AI deployment possible, including accountability structures, meaningful human oversight, policies governing autonomous (agentic) AI, and risk frameworks aligned with the EU AI Act, GDPR, and emerging U.S. federal and state AI regulation.
What distinguishes Michael’s counsel is that he has built these systems himself. Before joining Akerman, he spent more than a decade in-house at global technology companies, serving in senior legal leadership roles where he governed AI-enabled products from the inside. As Head of Global Data Privacy and AI at Highspot, he led the company’s worldwide AI governance and data protection strategy, guiding generative AI products through EU AI Act compliance and advising on the full lifecycle of AI development — from product design and intellectual property to ethics and market access. Earlier, he architected Autodesk’s global GDPR compliance framework and counseled on its AI-enabled generative design products. He also served as lead counsel for a multibillion-dollar global payments business at Amazon, managing more than 1,000 commercial agreements each year. He advises clients the same way he built programs in-house, with a pragmatic approach grounded in business priorities and a clear understanding of how AI governance works in practice.
As Director of AI Governance & Data Protection within Akerman Intelligence, Michael also works with the firm’s CEO, General Counsel, and technology and innovation leaders to further the development of Akerman’s AI governance framework — the policies and oversight structures under which AI, including agentic systems, is deployed across the firm.
Michael began his legal career as a corporate lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis and Dechert, representing private equity funds, issuers, and financial institutions in complex transactions. Earlier, he served as an intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he focused on counterterrorism, an experience that grounds his approach to security, risk assessment, and operational decision-making.
Michael earned a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge Judge Business School (King’s College), where his dissertation on GDPR as a source of competitive advantage was awarded a Distinction. He remains active in Cambridge’s entrepreneurship and innovation community, most recently returning in 2026 as a guest lecturer to present “Sense and Scalability: Investor-Ready Security, Privacy & AI for Founders.”