L.A. Sees Many Moves Among Entertainment Law Firms

Also in December, Manatt brought on Neil Sacker as a partner in Los Angeles. He made the move there from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where he had joined as of counsel in May 2017. Prior to his move to Skadden, Sacker worked a short stint at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan's Los Angeles office, which he joined in 2016. His move to Stroock marked a return to private practice after in-house roles at several companies, including Miramax Films and Warner Brothers Studios.

As for Manatt, Sacker, who has been practicing as an entertainment lawyer for 25 years, says: “As my business in both China and the U.S. was growing quickly, I wanted to go to a premier law firm where entertainment was a focus, and Manatt was a natural fit.” Sacker says he has known “Lindsay Conner, the co-chair of Manatt's entertainment and media practice, for many years and believe that we have complementary skill sets and a common professional style that would even further accelerate the growth of my clientele.”

“There have been huge changes in the television and film space and Manatt has been at the forefront of helping clients navigate those changes,” says Sacker, explaining that increasing competition from streaming services and Chinese filmmakers is creating greater demand for content. “As I represent financiers, producers and distributors, these trends have been a very positive development,” he adds.

Manatt, a 308-lawyer firm, recently suffered a loss when longtime corporate partner   T. Hale Boggs III, who chaired the firm's digital division and the investment committee for its venture capital fund, left to join O'Melveny & Myers' Century City office in Los Angeles. Boggs practiced at Manatt for 28 years. He helped the firm launch its Palo Alto office in 1998 and a San Francisco office in 2007.

DLA Piper watched Los Angeles partner Ellyn Garofalo, a veteran trial attorney with a roster of entertainment, real estate and health care clients, leave to join Venable in December. Garofalo had practiced law for over 15 years at Liner, which DLA Piper absorbed in 2017. She says Venable offered her “a big firm platform, with the culture and values of a small firm.”

Even before these most recent moves, October 2018 brought with it a wave of three other significant entertainment laterals in Los Angeles.

Robert “Bobby” Schwartz, a prominent entertainment litigator in the region, joined Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan after more than three years at Irell & Manella. Leif Cervantes de Reinstein, formerly head of Reed Smith's television and digital video practice, joined Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton in Century City. And DLA Piper, which has been aggressively expanding in Los Angeles since absorbing Liner last year, brought on a pair of former Greenberg Traurig partners to co-chair its entertainment finance practice. Thomas Ara and Robert Sherman, had both joined Greenberg Traurig in 2014 from Reed Smith.

Meanwhile, Greenberg Traurig picked up two new partners in California earlier in 2018, which included an entertainment lawyer. The firm's Los Angeles office hired Elizabeth Valentina, a former in-house lawyer at Fox Entertainment Group. In San Francisco, Greenberg Traurig brought on cybersecurity expert Gretchen Ramos from Squire Patton Boggs.

During 2018, Los Angeles-based Paul Hastings hired a 10-lawyer group from Loeb & Loeb to build out the entertainment and media practice group for its newly launched Century City office.

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Xiumei Dong covers the business of law for ALM from the West Coast. He can be reached at [email protected].