Retail and e-commerce companies operate in a marketplace defined by constant evolution—digital transformation, shifting consumer expectations, emerging regulations, and the relentless pressure to balance growth, risk, and innovation. Our attorneys help clients navigate these challenges and turn them into competitive advantages.
We handle the full range of retail legal needs: high-stakes litigation, complex transactions, day-to-day operational guidance, intellectual property matters, and regulatory compliance issues. Our integrated approach draws on deep bench strength across complementary practice areas, so clients receive coordinated counsel that accounts for the downstream impact of decision-making.
With the addition of a team of San Francisco-based litigators, Ballard Spahr is home to one of the nation’s oldest dedicated Retail & E-Commerce teams, which has an impressive track record of securing significant wins for retailers. Founded two decades ago with the vision of serving as a comprehensive legal partner for retailers, the team has grown to represent more than 100 retail and e-commerce brands. Its clients range from Fortune 500 companies and luxury retailers to emerging e-commerce ventures, iconic brick-and-mortar stores, hospitality concepts, and consumer products manufacturers.
Chambers-ranked for Retail for the past decade, our attorneys have earned recognition for their retail-focused work from Law360, Thomson Reuters, The Daily Journal, and other leading publications.
Our work includes:
- Consumer Class Actions: We defend clients in the full range of consumer class actions targeting retailers. Our experience includes false advertising claims (pricing practices, “Made in the USA” representations, greenwashing, and influencer marketing, privacy statues (CIPA, TCPA, VPPA, FACTA, and Song Beverly), privacy statutes, automatic renewal and subscription programs, gift card regulations, and return policy disputes.
- False Advertising and Deceptive Trade Practices Litigation: Our team has defended retailers in hundreds of filed or threatened consumer class actions brought under California’s UCL, FAL, and CLRA, New York’s GBL, Washington’s CPA, Oregon’s UTPA, and similar consumer protection statutes across the country.
- Pricing Defense: With more than 130 matters under our belt, we have shaped the legal landscape in this area, securing precedent-setting decisions at the Ninth Circuit, the California Court of Appeal, and the New Jersey Supreme Court, and achieving critical wins at class certification, summary judgment, and trial. We understand how these cases are built, how they can be defeated, and how to advise retailers on pricing practices that withstand scrutiny.
- Privacy and Data Security: Our cross‑disciplinary Privacy and Data Security Team helps retail clients reduce privacy, AI, and cyber risk. We develop and implement privacy programs and training, advise on compliance and vendor management, and support clients through privacy and data‑security issues that arise in transactions and daily operations. The team also provides 24/7 incident‑response support through our Emergency Response Hotline.
- Regulatory Compliance: We guide clients through the complex web of state and federal consumer protection laws affecting retailers, including California’s Proposition 65 and related labeling requirements.
- Products Liability and Mass Tort: We defend retailers, consumer products companies, and manufacturers in a broad range of claims of design and manufacturing defects, failure to warn, and personal injury. Our team also counsels clients on CPSC recalls and regulatory inquiries, supply chain risk allocation, indemnification disputes with vendors and manufacturers, and crisis communications.
- Marketing, Advertising, and Promotions: We regularly advise on labeling, advertising campaigns, email subject lines, promotional rules (including sweepstakes), loyalty programs, gift-card laws, phone and text messaging laws, and the use of customer data in marketing efforts.
- Intellectual Property: Our national team of Fashion IP attorneys has decades of experience counseling leading brands on trademarks, copyrights, and design and utility patents. We provide due diligence and counseling that empowers clients to grow strategically, and we secure the IP assets that capture the value of their creative vision.
- Antitrust and Competition: Our nationally recognized Antitrust and Competition Group advises on the full range of antitrust matters affecting retailers, including the design and implementation of Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policies; resale price maintenance considerations; anti-tying, bundling, and price discrimination issues with suppliers and vendors; exclusive dealing and distribution agreements; HSR filings and merger review for retail acquisitions; and compliance with the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape around algorithmic and surveillance pricing. We also defend clients in antitrust litigation-including class actions alleging price-fixing, group boycotts, and other anticompetitive conduct, and represent clients in litigation and investigations before the DOJ Antitrust Division, FTC, and state attorneys general.
- Consumer Financial Services: With more than 70 attorneys across the country, our top-ranked Consumer Financial Services Group advises retailers on the design and documentation of credit products—including store-branded credit cards—as well as in compliance with state and federal laws, and in litigation involving those products, including class actions.
- Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution: We help clients to resolve disputes with vendors, suppliers, franchisees, landlords, and technology partners efficiently while preserving critical relationships. We represent retailers in conflicts involving pricing, delivery, and chargebacks; distribution and fulfillment disagreements; franchise disputes; breach of contract claims arising from licensing and collaboration agreements; lease disputes; and technology platform disputes. Our trial-ready litigators across 19 offices handle high-stakes retail disputes in state and federal courts, arbitration, and mediation.
- Retail-Focused Labor and Employment: We advise retailers on wage and hour and employment class actions, employment agreements (including arbitration, non-competition, non-solicitation, confidentiality, and intellectual property agreements), and single-plaintiff matters. With one of the deepest benches of labor attorneys in the AmLaw 100, we also advise on managing performance, leaves and accommodations, employment policies, and issues involving tip-pools, fair workweek/predictive scheduling compliance, and related compliance investigations and audits.
- Retail-Focused Manufacturing Counsel: We advise on regulatory compliance for labeling, packaging, and product safety standards; supplier and contract manufacturer agreements; quality assurance protocols and vendor audits; sourcing strategies and supply chain risk management; and new product development. We advise on current and pending legislation—from CPSC requirements to state chemical disclosure laws—and develop strategies that keep products on shelves and out of the courtroom.
- Bankruptcy, Creditors’ Rights, and Restructuring: We advise on all facets of navigating financial distress, including restructurings, workouts, the refinancing of debt, creditor-debtor litigation, asset dispositions and recapitalizations, reorganizations, and liquidations, both in and outside of formal proceedings.
- Corporate Transactions: We advise retailers on mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, joint venture arrangements, Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), securities issues, and corporate governance matters. We have significant experience in the private equity sector, as well as with emerging companies. And our attorneys often serve as outside counsel to closely held and owner-operated businesses.
- Real Estate Development and Property Rights: Our property development team provides strategic representation through every phase of the development and launch of brick-and-mortar facilities—from boutiques and retail storefronts to distribution centers and industrial complexes. We advise on issues that arise in securing rights and developing real estate—including land assemblage, land use approvals, environmental permitting and other regulatory compliance, easement and access rights, and the array of development- and construction-related contracts.