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Tell me, how many “We’ve updated our Privacy Policy” emails did you get the final two weeks of May? For me, it fell somewhere on the scale between “I wish I could see other emails on the first page” and “Please help, my computer is melting.”

But all of those emails were by design, and furthermore, necessary. The deadline for compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has come and gone, and the hope is that you and the firms you work with were compliant by the May 25 deadline. While it remains to be seen whether the EU actually subjects those not in compliance to astronomical associated fines, their existence alone shows that anyone who could be in contact with EU citizens should be taking the GDPR seriously. And in today’s Internet-enabled and increasingly globalized age, chances are that includes you, no matter where you’re physically located.

Of course, Legaltech News and all of our ALM brands covered the lead up to the GDPR and how to get your organization in compliance. But right before the deadline, a compliance expert I was interviewing said a funny thing: “You know, most people are treating May 25 like a finish line. It’s not. It’s only the beginning.” It was insightful, and very true—the GDPR, alongside other privacy-related regulations, aren’t going away any time soon. If anything, organizations are going to need to be even more aware of their exploding data, even as new sources for that data pop up almost daily.

Are we going to see another rash of Privacy Policy emails in a few months? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean that regulators, courts, or the world’s largest companies have forgotten about privacy, and neither should you. It’s something we’ll continue to report on at Legaltech News, and it’s potentially even more important for those acting as conduits of information between law firms and the public like legal marketers. It’s tough to ever be 100 percent prepared in this new paradigm, but continually updating your plans is becoming increasingly necessary.