Ara K. Ayvazian

Ara focuses his practice on class action and complex litigation, with a particular emphasis on high-stakes commercial disputes and privacy and cybersecurity law. Ara has a comprehensive background that includes practicing in federal court in California, New Mexico, Georgia, and Massachusetts, and city, county, state and federal courts in New York and Florida.

Ara handles matters at all phases of litigation, from pretrial counseling to drafting appeals. Ara’s representative matters include the following:

• Data Breach Litigation - Ara has successfully represented major health care providers, insurance institutions, and national corporations, among others, in large-scale data breach class actions.

• Website Privacy Litigation - Ara has represented a variety of entities in class action lawsuits arising from the use of website marketing tools, like session replay, tags, and pixels. These “novel” lawsuits are based on alleged violations of state/federal wiretap laws, federal privacy laws, state consumer protection laws, and common law theories of liability.

• Class Action Litigation - Ara has successfully obtained dismissal of a product liability class action in federal court for a major consumer goods manufacturer.

Before joining Shook, Ara was a law clerk for more than five years in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, where he clerked for U.S. District Judge James D. Whittemore and U.S. Magistrate Judge Julie S. Sneed. His accomplishments include managing a high-volume docket of civil and criminal cases; conducting legal research and drafting bench memoranda, orders and reports and recommendation on a variety of complex legal issues; and advising and providing support during hearings and trials.

Prior to clerking, Ara was a prosecutor at the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office. As part of his trial experience, Ara conducted jury and bench trials in New York State Supreme Court and New York State Criminal Court, including approximately 14 trials and 30 evidentiary hearings as first chair. In addition to trials, Ara presented more than 100 felony cases to grand juries. He then went on to be assistant corporate counsel in the Office of the Corporation Counsel of the New York City Law Department where he defended tort liability claims brought against the City of New York from case inception through trial. He also investigated allegations against the City to determine appropriate defense strategy, evaluated liability for settlement, drafted substantive and dispositive motions, and prepared cases for trial.

Ara earned his J.D., summa cum laude, from Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center in New York, where he was editor-in-chief of the Touro Law Review. While in law school, he won multiple CALI Awards and interned in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, followed by an internship with the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) in Kaiserslautern, Germany. During his tenure in the JAG Corps, Ara worked on matters including federal tort claims, employment law, international law and environmental law. After receiving his undergraduate degree in business management from Ithaca College, Ara worked as a settlement analyst for a law firm where he conducted analysis and research directly affecting the ground zero mass tort involving more than 10,000 clients.