Stanton (“Larry”) Stein is a partner and the head of Russ August & Kabat’s Media & Entertainment group. Larry’s clients include actors, writers, directors, producers, musicians, high-net-worth individuals, entertainment guilds, talent agencies, personal and business management companies, independent production companies, and interactive gaming companies. Larry is widely known in the entertainment industry for his work taking on Hollywood studios. Throughout the last decades, Larry created legal theories for challenging the film and television accounting practices of vertically integrated studios and media conglomerates through litigation. He is literally the father of vertical integration accounting lawsuits. His efforts have changed the face of talent and rights holders’ contract negotiations with studios, networks, and their affiliated production companies, seeking to more evenly allocate revenue to profit participants including actors, directors, writers and producers. Larry has brought countless lawsuits on behalf of his clients against companies that were self-dealing on licensing fees and a variety of other revenue streams. In addition to his groundbreaking litigation in the profit participation space, Larry has also fought to establish copyright protection for formats in reality television, bringing the seminal lawsuit in that area of law.
Larry also has a long history of bringing defamation, right of privacy, and right of publicity actions against publications and private individuals while dealing with the media and governmental agencies. He has secured dozens of confidential settlements and retractions.
Larry is a frequent author and lecturer in the field of entertainment law. He is an adjunct Professor at USC Gould School of Law, where he teaches Entertainment Law. He has also taught a class at Stanford Law School and lectured at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of California’s Boalt Hall School of Law.
Regularly called on by journalists and legal scholars for comment regarding legal issues facing the entertainment industry, he has been quoted in such publications as: The Hollywood Reporter, Buzzfeed News, Law360, IPWatchdog, USA Today, Los Angeles Daily Journal, Deadline, Variety, Billboard, and many more.
Throughout his career, Larry has been recognized by leading legal, business, and entertainment industry publications and organizations for the successes he has achieved on behalf of his clients. He is ranked as a “Top Media and Entertainment Litigator” by Chambers USA, regularly recognized as a “Power Lawyer” by The Hollywood Reporter and recently recognized as a Legal Legend, rated AV Preeminent by Martindale-Hubbell, and has been named a “Southern California Super Lawyer” from 2004-2009 and 2011-2021. In 2019, Larry was recognized as a Southern California Top 100 Super Lawyer. The Daily Journal named Larry one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in California,” while the Los Angeles Business Journal profiled him in “Who’s Who in LA Law,” and California Lawyer featured him as a top five “A-list Entertainment Lawyers.” Nationally, Larry has been recognized as a “Best Lawyer” by The Best Lawyers in America and in “Lawdragon 500: Leading Lawyers in America.” Larry has received the “Entertainment Lawyer of the Year” awards from both the Beverly Hills and Century City Bar Associations, as well as the ACLU Foundation’s “Pro Bono Civil Liberties Award.”
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