Jonathan Sherman

Jonathan is a general commercial litigator who combines 25 years of business litigation and First Amendment expertise to specialize in the strategic use of reputation, a unique approach to resolving information age and knowledge economy disputes.

Named since 2012 to its annual list of American’s “500 Leading Lawyers,” Lawdragon calls Jonathan a “nimble advocate with a sharp legal mind” who “can handle any task” and whose “passion for the law bubbles forth with astonishing ferocity.” A recent profile called him “Floyd Abrams meets David Boies with a side order of Hunter S. Thompson.”

Jonathan has tried cases, argued appeals, and resolved multiparty disputes in securities, financial institution, business defamation, intellectual property, unfair competition, antitrust and free speech matters. He has represented an eclectic mix of clients: from mining to media, finance to fashion, reinsurance to online gaming, political figures and cultural critics, among others. He is both a plaintiff’s lawyer and a traditional defense counsel.

At ease under heavy scrutiny since his earliest years of practice representing Court TV in the OJ Simpson criminal proceedings, Jonathan is now among the world’s leading advocates for public access to courts. The New York Times has twice published his op-ed pieces. A former member of the New York State Bar Association’s Media Law Committee, he has taught at Yale, Stanford and Fordham, and lectured in London, Brussels, Budapest and elsewhere.

Jonathan is a Trustee of DC’s acclaimed Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, and has been listed in Who’s Who in America since 2000.

Some of Jonathan’s recent work includes:

• Leading separate litigations brought by one of the world’s largest financial institutions alleging multibillion dollar securities fraud, one against an $18 billion, publicly traded REIT, the other against Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras
• Representing a state-owned Asian company in a dispute (resolved successfully in negotiation) with a publicly traded Australian firm arising out of a contract to mine the client’s untapped coal reserve, the world’s second largest
• Advising the publisher of a critical biography of 2016 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump
• Arguing against and defeating a motion to obtain video deposition used at trial of the late Steve Jobs taken shortly before he died, during the Firm’s 2014 federal trial win over antitrust claims relating to iPods
• Successfully defending the world’s largest internet gaming company against false news reports based on anti-Semitic sources and published in collusion with client’s competitor
• Leading the defense to allegations that global rebranding of fashion house Yves Saint Laurent violated trademark law, including defeating preliminary injunction motion to halt rebranding
• Protecting PE firms and hedge funds in different matters to maximize the value of different securities and bankruptcy assets, including obtaining summary judgment—before discovery—for plaintiffs, upheld by the Ninth Circuit
• Defending a U.S. telecom against accounting fraud allegations on both sides of the Atlantic arising from joint venture with a Dutch partner, including obtaining dismissal—upheld by the Third Circuit—of a $9 billion RICO lawsuit brought by court-appointed Dutch bankruptcy trustees

End the Supreme Court's Ban on Cameras,The New York Times, Op-Ed Page (Apr. 24, 2015)

Thoughts on the Constitutionality of Televised Trials in the Age of Information and the Era of Infotainment, MLRC Bulletin (Jan. 2005)

New York Judge Issues Watershed Ruling Declaring Constitutional Right to Televise Trials (LDRC Libelletter, Feb. 2000)

Lifting the Veil, Legal Backgrounder (Nov. 1, 1996)

In Trusts We Trust, Tax Management Compensation Planning Journal (Nov. 1996)

Pictures at an Execution, The New York Times, Op-Ed page (May 3, 1991)