Erin McMahon

Senior Associate General Counsel

Erin Brisbay McMahon is a Senior Associate General Counsel for Health Affairs and Research at the University of Kentucky.  She has over twenty-five years of legal experience in private practice and public service, and has also served as in-house counsel.

As Senior Associate General Counsel, Erin advises the University in various areas of healthcare law, including contracts, privacy issues, payer relations, and regulatory compliance.

Prior to joining the Health Affairs and Research Group, Erin worked as an Affiliate Attorney with Coppersmith Brockelman PLC, where she focused on data privacy and contracting issues.  She also served as the University’s HIPAA Security and Privacy Director.  Before that, she served as in-house data privacy counsel to Conduent Business Services, a global spin-off of Xerox Business Services.  She spent eleven years as a partner at Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs in Lexington, Kentucky, where she practiced healthcare and corporate law.  She began her career at Greenebaum Doll & McDonald, and later served as a law clerk to the Honorable Jennifer B. Coffman, United States District Judge for the Eastern and Western Districts of Kentucky.  Before coming to the University, she advised start-up companies, hospital systems and other healthcare providers, manufacturers, governmental entities, insurance and managed care companies, and medical device companies on a variety of issues, including healthcare compliance, health insurance and managed care, employment, contracting, corporate structuring, and litigation matters.      

Erin served as the President of the Fayette County Bar Association and was an adjunct faculty member at Transylvania University, where she taught Business Law, and at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law, where she taught Health Law.  She has authored over 30 articles and book chapters, many of them focused on HIPAA compliance.

A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Erin received her undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Transylvania University and her law degree from The College of William & Mary Marshall-Wythe School of Law, where she served as a trial advocacy teaching assistant and as a board editor and the candidates’ program director of the William & Mary Law Review.

B.A., Transylvania University (summa cum laude with honors in History and Political Science)

J.D., The College of William & Mary Marshall-Wythe School of Law (Law Review)