Rod Freeman
Partner, Cooley (UK) LLP
Rod is an international products lawyer with more than 20 years of experience supporting the world’s leading and most innovative companies.
Rod is routinely ranked as a leader in major legal directories, where he has been described as ‘the outstanding go-to specialist for product liability matters’, ‘one of the top product liability and product regulatory experts worldwide’, and ‘without a shadow of a doubt the most knowledgeable product liability lawyer in the European space’. Regarded as ‘a real technical expert with knowledge of all the latest developments, and an enormously instinctive feel for the law’, Rod appeared on The Lawyer’s Hot 100 2018 list of UK lawyers and is recognised in the Legal 500 Hall of Fame.
Since joining Cooley as a partner in 2017, Rod has been building a different kind of products law team – one that focuses on finding creative and practical commercial solutions to worldwide problems. Rod provides unique insights into the global liability and regulatory landscape, and he has an instinct for finding practical solutions for international companies. With a background in high-stakes product compliance litigation, Rod understands the challenges faced by companies in an increasingly risky global environment.
Rod holds multiple leadership positions in the international product law community, and he frequently works with policymakers to help shape the future of product compliance and litigation. Rod has been appointed to the European Commission’s Expert Group on Liability and New Technologies. He also served two terms on the board of directors of International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization (ICPHSO), where he is now chair of its International Program Committee. He sits as an industry representative on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Working Party on Consumer Product Safety, is Vice Chair of the Consumer Policy Committee at Business@OECD, and he authored the OECD publication ‘Consumer Product Safety in the Internet of Things’.
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