Top 10 Lawyers In Usa

Published on July 16 2018

"No envelope mix-up here! Meet the lawyers behind the 'Moonlight' Oscar winner, Melania's lawsuit, Bill O'Reilly's downturn, the year's most significant media megamergers and pretty much anything that matters in Hollywood. Extortion. Messy divorces. Nine-figure deals with Chinese media conglomerates. It's been a hectic year for Hollywood's power attorneys, who once more gather in THR's webpages for its magazine's yearly Power Attorneys issue. The women and men on this list handle a range of cases, from simple talent contracts to complex corporate mergers that take months to iron out, but they all have things in common. All of them love working in the entertainment market. They all play a very important part in maintaining Hollywood's wheels turning. They're at the very top of the field. And -- judging from THR's poll -- they drink too much coffee (a mean of 5.5 cups every day, even if calculations include the man who claimed to down 97 cups). Beneath, the Electricity Lawyers of 2017 talk about their biggest cases, reveal their personal political beliefs (only 14 percent think Donald Trump will get impeached) and reply the age-old question, "Which superhero would you want to represent? ""

Kelly Klaus

Munger, Tolles & Olson. Alma mater Stanford Law School Why he things He defended against the MPAA and NATO against a lawsuit that could have given films with smoking an automatic R-rating and helped many studios win an injunction against streaming website VidAngel. He also 's also taken the lead on two copyright claims, such as Warner Bros. in a screener piracy lawsuit against Sophisticated Artists. Klaus also successfully defended TMZ when Jared Leto resisted the website for publishing a movie of him talking smack about Taylor Swift. Supervillain I'd most want to defend "The Joker -- although the outcome of losing might not be quite as simple. "

Bryan Freedman

Freedman & Taitelman Alma mater McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific Why he issues Freedman specializes in inside-baseball industry disputes, from agency wars to idea theft. He also 's repping UTA in its own agent-poaching struggle with CAA and defeat an antitrust lawsuit over UTA's packing practices. He's also symbolizing Black-ish founder Kenya Barris and hidden-camera magician Michael Carbonaro of The Carbonaro Effect (who are every being sued by people claiming they're owed a stake in these series) and Silicon Valley's T.J. Miller, who's countersuing a taxi driver he states used bogus attack claims to extort him. Supervillain I'd most want to signify "Anyone from CAA. "

Michael Gendler

Gendler & Kelly Alma mater UCLA School of Law Why he matters Gendler reps some of Hollywood's top showrunners: Shonda Rhimes, Shawn Ryan, David E. Kelley, Kurt Sutter, Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. He advised Rhimes about taking her company private (her workers currently work for Shondaland, not ABC) and has been behind Kelley's comeback year (Substantial Little Lies, Goliath). On the large screen, he invented the bargains for Rob Marshall to direct and John DeLuca to produce Disney's Mary Poppins sequel, reuniting them with client Meryl Streep. Most dangerous thing I've done in a decade "I snapped directly with Harvey Weinstein. "

Bruce Ramer

Gang Tyre Ramer & Brown Alma mater Harvard Law School Why he matters He has been Steven Spielberg's mouthpiece since before Jaws. Other customers include David O. Russell (who's working in an untitled Mafia drama for Amazon that can star Robert De Niro and Julianne Moore) and recently signed Hidden Figures director Theodore Melfi. Ramer is the chairman of the Institute on Entertainment Law and Business in USC, where he curates the annual entertainment law symposium.

Daniel Petrocelli

O'Melveny & Myers Alma mater Southwestern Law School Why he issues His most headline-grabbing situation in 2017 was defending Donald Trump at the Trump University fraud case. That settled around the time that his client won the presidential elections. Petrocelli also settled a lawsuit for customer SiriusXM (at a dispute over public broadcasting of pre-1972 sound recordings), worked with Fox on its own lawsuit against Netflix for poaching economists defended Kesha within her legal war with Dr. Luke. Last TV show binged Narcos