Van Lier was researching and writing about the legal implications of generative AI in the entertainment industry as early as 2019 — years before it became the defining issue of the industry. That head start means her clients aren’t getting reactive advice. They’re getting counsel from someone who has been thinking about these questions longer than almost anyone else in the field. And her focus on performer identity rights goes back even further — Van Lier has been engaged with right of publicity issues for well over two decades, long before AI made them urgent.

Van Lier doesn’t just practice in this space — she helps define it. She is the author of the AI chapter in the Thomson Reuters treatise Entertainment Law: Legal Concepts and Business Practices, has written on deepfakes and digital replicas, and teaches some of the first courses in the country on AI and entertainment law at USC Gould School of Law, Loyola Law School, and Southwestern Law School. She has also authored amicus curiae briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit on performer rights and intellectual property.

The legal and ethical questions raised by AI, deepfakes, and synthetic media don’t stop at the U.S. border — and neither does Van Lier’s expertise. She holds an LL.M. in Innovation, Technology, and the Law from the University of Edinburgh with a specific focus on deepfakes, and an MBA from Oxford Brookes University, bringing an international dimension to her practice that few entertainment attorneys can match.