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By all measures, Ziffren Brittenham senior confederate Clifford Gilbert-Lurie has had a storied run as an leisure authorized skilled. Over the course of his four-decade-plus occupation, he has made big presents for a protracted guidelines of loyal customers which have generated pages upon pages of headlines throughout the current enterprise trades. For these expert accomplishments, alongside alongside together with his philanthropic efforts, he’s being honored with Choice’s Vitality of Laws Award at a breakfast April 18 on the 4 Seasons Resort in Beverly Hills.
However when one wanted to degree to a single metric that sums up how loads he’s valued, it could be a British luxurious automotive topped by an enormous purple bow.
Further significantly, a Bentley, gifted to him by producer Dick Wolf.
Sandra Bullock vividly remembers the night. The 12 months was 2004. She had come to Gilbert-Lurie’s fiftieth birthday celebration armed with what she thought was the precise current, an 18th century silver wine sediment sifter.
“They’re arduous to hunt out intact,” explains Bullock, a Gilbert-Lurie shopper since 1996. “I was strolling as a lot as his dwelling, so excited, holding it choose it was the holy grail, and there was that engaging black Bentley with the big-ass bow. I was merely… the style.”
Wolf insists the Bentley was not a mere birthday current for Gilbert-Lurie, nonetheless a thanks for closing the newest in an ongoing string of giant whole presents. He says that over the previous three and a half a few years they’ve had basically probably the most worthwhile lawyer-client relationship throughout the historic previous of the television enterprise, which isn’t any idle boast coming from an individual with 9 group displays at current airing on broadcast TV, along with the very best two longest-running, live-action, scripted, U.S. primetime TV assortment of all time (“Laws & Order: SVU” and “Laws & Order”).
“I can say with out hesitation I wouldn’t be the place I’m proper this second with out Cliff,” says Wolf. “We’ve on no account didn’t make a care for anybody who really wished to make a deal, which is in itself a miracle. That options networks, writers, producers and actors. It’s on no account truly been a problem, [whether it] requires the velvet Cliff or the steel Cliff.”
George Cheeks has observed Gilbert-Lurie’s expertise as a negotiator from all through the desk for just a few years, first as a main exec at NBC and now as CEO of CBS, the place he has a three-show block of Wolf displays on Tuesday night (“FBI,” “FBI: Worldwide” and “FBI: Most Wanted”), along with two displays by one different of the authorized skilled’s mega-producer customers, Jerry Bruckheimer (“CSI: Vegas” and “The Great Race”).
“We’ve been in negotiations the place I principally left feeling like I hadn’t obtained any of the components I truly wished to win, however I was on no account offended with him, on no account felt taken advantage of, because of he has this potential moreover to be very clear about his technique and what he should get the deal achieved,” says Cheeks. “There’s no duplicity, no guile. He’s as simple as they arrive.”
Totally different current customers benefiting from Gilbert-Lurie’s dealmaking prowess embody Tina Fey, Claire Danes, Michael J. Fox, Sarah Silverman, Drew Carey, Patrick Stewart and Microsoft.
“I’ve on a regular basis acknowledged if I needed a lawyer, I’d hire Cliff,” says Sam Fischer, who has been working with Gilbert-Lurie at Ziffren Brittenham for 38 years and proper this second serves alongside him as certainly one of many company’s two co-managing companions. “He does an unimaginable amount of preparation and evaluation regarding the specifics of a deal and the commerce on the entire, having a look at not merely the technicalities of a specific deal, however as well as on a regular basis the bigger picture and future developments and the way in which it might impression his customers. It’s a thoroughness that
is extraordinary.”
CAA agent Jeff Jacobs, who has recognized Gilbert-Lurie for higher than three a few years and currently labored with him on Bruckheimer’s television presents, says his occupation brings to ideas the adage that greatness is printed as consistency over time at a extreme stage.
“You don’t maintain the patrons that he has besides you do that in partnership with humanity, dedication, mannequin and allure,” says Jacobs. “I really feel he’s the personification of all that.”
As a child rising up in Los Angeles, Gilbert-Lurie first turned enamored with the considered being an authorized skilled when he study outdated licensed journals despatched to him by an uncle who was an organization lawyer in Detroit, with customers that included the Ford Motor Co.
“They’d digest the circumstances in what we’d time interval sound bites proper this second,” says Gilbert-Lurie of the journals. “Quite a lot of them had been authorized circumstances and points like that that even a toddler may understand.”
On the time, Gilbert-Lurie had no thought what an leisure authorized skilled was. He thought he’d be a trial lawyer like these he observed on TV displays like “Perry Mason” and “The Defenders.” Nevertheless after his first 12 months of laws college at UC Berkeley, he took a summer time season clerkship at Rosenfeld, Meyer & Susman, a Beverly Hills company whose principal shopper was leisure huge MCA Widespread. After incomes his JD and passing the bar in 1979, he joined the company as an affiliate, doing litigation involving contracts, copyrights, privateness and defamation.
When Widespread licensed Kamar Intl. to manufacture dolls of the title character from its 1982 blockbuster “E.T. the Further-Terrestrial,” a battle of curiosity prevented Rosenfeld from repping the Taiwanese toymaker in trademark infringement lawsuits that arose from the Chinese language language knockoffs that flooded the market. So Gilbert-Lurie and certainly one of many company’s companions left to launch a two-person apply coping with the circumstances, which occupied them for the next 18 months.
“As that was winding down, it was clear to me I wanted to each decide to stay throughout the litigation apply or do one factor else,” says Gilbert-Lurie. “And I that’s the place I decided to go in-house at Disney and in essence retrain myself to turn into a transactional lawyer.”
At Disney, Gilbert-Lurie was involved in negotiations with George Lucas to convey the Star Excursions expertise to Disneyland, along with fairly just a few actor, director and creator presents, and helped develop the studio’s income participation templates.
Roughly a 12 months and a half into his tenure, Gilbert-Lurie was educated that he was being promoted to fundamental counsel for Walt Disney Footage. He known as Ziffren Brittenham authorized skilled Tom Hoberman (now at Hansen, Jacobson) to ask him to barter his govt contract, and Hoberman shocked him by asking if he might be eager on coming to work for the company in its place.
“Cliff interviewed with us and we had been very impressed,” recollects Ziffren Brittenham founding confederate Ken Ziffren. “He knew an entire lot of the stuff that we had been stressing in our apply, which is adjust to the money and know heaps regarding the enterprise itself, and he was self-effacing and an excellent listener and good to be with. I made calls to Helene Hahn, who was the top of enterprise affairs and licensed at Disney in the mean time, and I principally begged her to let him out of his contract.”
After Gilbert-Lurie joined Ziffren Brittenham in 1986, he was positioned on Wolf’s account in a assist perform, coping with paperwork. When Wolf’s degree particular person left to sort his private company in 1987, Wolf adopted, nonetheless rapidly grew dissatisfied. He known as Ziffren Brittenham founding confederate Skip Brittenham and knowledgeable him he’d be eager on returning to the company if he may get a sensible, focused, buttoned-down authorized skilled to take care of his affairs. Brittenham useful Gilbert-Lurie, and Wolf gave him a trial-by-fire audition negotiating a renewal of his whole care for Widespread Television.
“The first time I met him in-person was on the conference desk with 4 attorneys on the alternative aspect and the senior enterprise affairs crew from Widespread,” recollects Gilbert-Lurie. “It was a extremely extended meeting, and we negotiated a extremely worthwhile deal. On the end of it, Dick known as up Skip and acknowledged, ‘That’s my man.’ And all of the items took off from that point.”
On the time, Wolf was worthwhile on the showrunner stage, coming off a two-season stint as a creator and co-producer of “Miami Vice.” In 1990, his current “Laws & Order” debuted on NBC, launching him on a path to turn into one of many worthwhile TV current creators-executive producers of all time, with higher than 2,000 episodes of primetime TV to his credit score rating.
“I’ve seen every potential aspect of the television enterprise by benefit of representing him,” says Gilbert-Lurie of Wolf. “He’s one in every of my most defining customers, and I talk with him nearly day-after-day.”
Gilbert-Lurie has moreover had a critical perform throughout the convergence of leisure and tech by way of his work with Microsoft. He helped the Seattle-based tech huge launch its short-lived film and TV manufacturing agency Xbox Leisure Studios in 2012 and further not too way back brokered presents for variations of a pair of its video video video games, the Amblin Television/Showtime Networks TV assortment “Halo,” which not too way back premiered its second season on Paramount+, and Warner Bros.’ “Minecraft” perform, set for launch in 2025.
“Over that course of time, there’s been such big shifts in enterprise and on the commerce stage and on the agency stage, and I really feel the agility with which Cliff was able to re-strategize and help us work by way of that has on a regular basis been invaluable,” says Kiki Wolfkill, head of Xbox IP development and leisure at Microsoft. “He understands the game aspect of the enterprise, and the franchise and IP price, and the way in which these variations match into our ecosystem in a technique that benefits every the film and TV companions we work with and ourselves on the game aspect.”
For Bullock, what stands out is the easiest way Clifford-Lurie has been able to stability the needs of his customers and his family, with whom she is shut. She recollects a second years prior to now, when he was on his annual journey alongside together with his partner, the authorized skilled, author and philanthropist Leslie Gilbert-Lurie, and their three now-
grownup children.
“I was dealing with loads drama and chaos, and I had no person to reach out to,” remembers Bullock. “He was someplace that had fully no cell service, in a cellphone gross sales area serving to me navigate a state of affairs, with a mud storm spherical him and a child on his hip, screaming its head off. He’s like Superman.”
Gilbert-Lurie will flip 70 in September, which suggests there’ll seemingly be one different big event and an opportunity for Bullock to avenge her current loss to Wolf. She may buy her authorized skilled a specific stamp for his assortment or a locomotive for the model railroad format he’s constructed in an upstairs room of his dwelling throughout the Brentwood neighborhood of West Los Angeles. Nevertheless Bullock doesn’t think about that supplies points are what he wants or needs.
“I really feel what Cliff would love basically probably the most is having every single human being that he adores and that adores him all under one roof, and easily have a second of connection, laughter, pleasure and music,” says Bullock. “And my sifter could be there. Maybe there’ll be one different Bentley.”
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