Biography
Bibliography| Courses
Professor Handel will be teaching Entertainment Unions and Guilds. Handel earned his Juris Doctor cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1990 where he was an editor for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. After law school, Handel clerked for the Honorable Irving Goldberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. After his clerkship, he joined Manatt, Phelps & Phillips as a litigation associate while also concurrently serving as federal associate independent counsel appointed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Handel represented film and TV writers as associate counsel with the Writers Guild of America in 1993, joined Behr and Abramson’s motion picture talent practice as an entertainment transactional associate in 1994, and went into sole practice in 1995 representing production companies and film talent before joining the law firm of TroyGould where Handel continues to serve as of counsel and member of its entertainment and corporate departments today.
Handel has been interviewed hundreds of times by local, national and international television, radio, print and online media outlets. He has also written footnoted articles on the conflict between content and technology companies and on trademarking movie titles. Handel has been a participant and panelist at various conferences and other presentations, including, most recently, those hosted by the Beverly Hills Bar Association and by Vanderbilt Law School. He was named one of the top 100 lawyers in California in 2008 and a Southern California Super Lawyer in 2006 and 2007.
In 2009, Handel published a short book entitled How to Write LOI's and Term Sheets and will be publishing Hollywood on Strike! by the end of the year. Forthcoming in 2010 is On the Record: 101 Tips for Working with the Media. His op-ed pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Journal, and the Los Angeles Business Journal. Handel is also a prolific writer for blogs such as the Huffington Post for which he has written more than 100 articles and for his own labor and new media law blog “Digital Media Law” (http://www.jhandel.com) where he has posted approximately 250 articles on the latest news in the law and business of digital media, traditional entertainment, intellectual property and technology.
