CMPs, Cookies, and Compliance: What Legal and Technical Teams Need to Know about Consent Management

Your website is collecting data. But is it doing so legally?

As privacy regulations grow more complex, so do the requirements for collecting data legally. Some laws now require websites to recognize automated consent signals and immediately change how they interact with users. And moving beyond just GDPR and CCPA, new waves of lawsuits are using other state and federal laws to target businesses that rely on common technologies like cookies, analytics, and other web-tracking tools.

This isn't a marketing problem anymore. Data privacy is an organizational responsibility – one that requires alignment among legal, technology, compliance, risk, and business decision-makers, not just the team managing your website or ad campaigns.

What does that alignment look like in practice? A Consent Management Platform, or CMP tool, and its cookie banners can help – but only if you use them in the right way. This requires legal insight, technical expertise, and an understanding of how applicable laws can change based on where and how you do business. Implementing a platform without understanding your legal exposure and technical needs first is like buying a lock without knowing what you're trying to protect.

Join us for a practical session where legal expertise meets technical implementation. In the first half, we’ll cover the legal risks of an incorrect CMP implementation with Godfrey & Kahn’s Zach Willenbrink, a shareholder on the firm’s Data Privacy, Cybersecurity & Technology and Litigation team. Then Northwoods’ data analytics expert Fred Pike will walk through how to identify and mitigate those risks, and how to stay compliant moving forward.

Key Take Aways

Understand what separates a compliant CMP from a checkbox exercise — and why it matters under GDPR, CCPA, and other state privacy laws.
Learn how your organization's geographic footprint and data practices shape which CMP is the right fit, both technically and legally.
Recognize why data privacy is no longer just a marketing responsibility, and how to build organizational alignment around consent compliance.
Spot implementation and testing gaps that undermine compliance, no matter which CMP platform you use.
Identify the tags, pixels, and scripts across your site that can trigger consent violations outside the CMP itself.