Los Angeles has spent more than a century building an economy around entertainment. The most visible parts of that economy are familiar: studio lots, soundstages, production crews, talent agencies and the actors and filmmakers whose names appear on marquees. Less visible is the network of attorneys, accountants, managers and other professionals whose work has allowed entertainment to develop into one of the region's most important industries.
Attorney Bryan Freedman's career offers a window into that side of Los Angeles. For more than three decades, the Los Angeles-based litigator has worked with performers, filmmakers, musicians, executives, talent agencies and entertainment companies, building a practice around the business relationships that exist behind film, television, music and other forms of media.
His career also illustrates something larger about the city. Entertainment may produce the content associated with Los Angeles around the world, but the industry's local impact extends far beyond what happens on a set.
An Industry That Reaches Across Los Angeles
Film and television remain major components of California's economy, and recent efforts to retain production demonstrate how much is at stake. California expanded its Film and Television Tax Credit Program in 2025, increasing annual funding from $330 million to $750 million. In the program's first full fiscal year following the expansion, 170 projects were awarded credits and were projected to generate $6.6 billion in direct production spending and nearly 35,000 cast and crew jobs statewide.
Much of that activity is tied to the Los Angeles production ecosystem. But the economic footprint of entertainment goes considerably further. Productions require everything from construction and transportation to catering, equipment rentals, real estate, insurance and financial services. They also support a sophisticated professional-services sector that has developed around the industry's unusual business needs.
Entertainment law is part of that infrastructure.
The field encompasses far more than celebrity lawsuits. Attorneys negotiate and litigate employment agreements, licensing arrangements, intellectual property rights, business partnerships and relationships between talent and the companies that represent them. When those relationships become complicated, the consequences can affect productions, companies and careers.
Freedman has spent much of his professional life working at that intersection.
Building a Los Angeles Legal Practice
After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of the Pacific's McGeorge School of Law, Freedman began practicing in California in 1991. His work developed around litigation rather than the transactional side of entertainment law, eventually encompassing entertainment, employment and commercial disputes.
That distinction is important. Transactional lawyers typically help structure agreements and business relationships. Litigators are often called when those relationships have reached an impasse. The work can require understanding not only the underlying law but also the economics of a production, agency, management company or individual career.
Over the years, Freedman's clients have included filmmakers Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino; actors Julia Roberts, Robert Downey Jr., Gabrielle Union, Seth Rogen and Vin Diesel; and recording artists including Mariah Carey and Alanis Morissette. His practice has also included companies, agencies, managers and executives whose names are less familiar to the public but whose work forms part of the business machinery of entertainment.
That combination is particularly characteristic of Los Angeles. The city's entertainment economy brings creative talent and corporate infrastructure into unusually close proximity, creating a market for professionals who understand both.
Entertainment Law as a Local Industry
It is easy to think of Hollywood law as something that exists solely in service of celebrities. In reality, it is part of a much larger professional community.
Los Angeles has developed deep concentrations of expertise around entertainment because the industry's major players have historically operated here. Studios need attorneys. Agencies need attorneys. Production companies, managers, executives, musicians and actors need legal representation. As those businesses grow, change ownership, form partnerships or encounter disputes, they generate work for law firms and other professional-services businesses throughout the region.
The relationship works in the other direction as well. A mature legal sector gives entertainment companies access to attorneys familiar with specialized areas of California law and with the business practices unique to film, television and music. That concentration of knowledge is one of the less visible advantages Los Angeles has accumulated over generations as an entertainment center.
Freedman's career developed within that ecosystem. His longevity in the field reflects the continued demand for specialized litigation even as the industry around him has changed substantially.
From Studio Hollywood to a Broader Media Economy
When Freedman began practicing in the early 1990s, the entertainment business was considerably more centralized. Major studios dominated film, broadcast and cable networks controlled television distribution, and record labels played an outsized role in determining how music reached audiences.
Today's landscape includes streaming companies, independent production houses, podcasts, digital creators, gaming organizations and social media businesses alongside those traditional institutions. Intellectual property can travel instantly across platforms, while individual creators can build companies and global audiences without relying on conventional media distribution.
For Los Angeles, that evolution represents both a challenge and an opportunity. The city is competing with other production centers for film and television work, but it also possesses decades of accumulated expertise in the industries that surround content creation.
Entertainment law has evolved with that shift. Questions involving digital licensing, online talent, technology and new forms of media now sit alongside traditional contract, employment and intellectual property disputes.
For attorneys such as Freedman, adapting to those changes has meant working within a definition of entertainment that is considerably broader than it was three decades ago.
The Professionals Behind the Creative Economy
Los Angeles' relationship with entertainment is sometimes reduced to Hollywood landmarks and celebrity culture. Economically, however, the industry is supported by a far larger network of workers and businesses.
The California Film Commission reports that since the state's film and television tax credit program began in 2009, it has generated more than $34 billion in economic activity and supported more than 243,000 cast and crew jobs. Those figures capture production activity, but the broader entertainment economy also supports professional services that are difficult to see from a movie set.
Law is one of them.
Bryan Freedman's career represents one small part of that larger story. His work over more than thirty years has taken place within a legal community that helps Los Angeles sustain its role not simply as a place where entertainment is created, but as a place where entertainment businesses are built, represented and managed.
As Los Angeles works to keep productions and entertainment jobs in Southern California, that surrounding infrastructure remains an important advantage. Cameras and soundstages may be the most visible signs of the industry, but the city's status as an entertainment capital has always depended on considerably more than what happens in front of the camera.
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