Jonathan Handel

Jonathan Handel practices transactional entertainment and technology law at TroyGould in Los Angeles. He has previously worked as a talent lawyer; as associate counsel of the Writers Guild; and as a litigator. He is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and was named by the Daily Journal as one of the top 100 lawyers in California in 2008.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College in applied math and computer science, Handel worked for several years in the computer industry before attending Harvard Law School. He graduated cum laude in 1990, and then clerked for a federal appeals judge.

Handel has appeared about 450 times in international, national and local television, radio, print and online media, including ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news programs, cable news networks, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, NPR, wire services, trade press, The Economist, Entertainment Weekly, and even the London Star tabloid. He blogs at http://www.jhandel.com, the Huffington Post and AlwaysOn, and has published op-ed pieces in the L.A. Times and other outlets.

Handel is the author of a short book for technology executives, entitled How to Write LOIs and Term Sheets, available on Amazon. An article by Handel on trademarking movie titles was selected as the cover article of the April 2008 issue of Los Angeles Lawyer Magazine, and another article, on the struggle between content and technology, appeared April 2009 in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law.

Handel has also presented seminars on the entertainment industry to professional audiences in Los Angeles, Park City (at the Sundance Film Festival), Nashville (Vanderbilt Law School), Taiwan, and Havana. For several years, he taught a film appreciation and screening class (approximately 400 students) for UCLA Extension.