Media and Entertainment Counsel: Its Own Firm List, Los Angeles Work

General counsel who look for entertainment law firms often start from the firms that head the market's deal tables. Sartori & Partners data show a different list: across 972 media and entertainment deals in the 12 months to October 2026, only Latham & Watkins and Kirkland & Ellis appear in both the sector's top 10 and the market's top 10 deal advisers. The work leans toward disputes and intellectual property far more than the deal market does, a larger share of its deals is handled with lawyers in Los Angeles than in any other sector, and only 10.3% of the deals carry a disclosed value. Each of those facts changes how a media company should build its panel of outside counsel.

Latham & Watkins is credited on more media and entertainment deals than any other firm, in the 61-100 band. The next four are Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Kirkland & Ellis, Greenberg Traurig and Loeb & Loeb, each in the 21-40 band. No firm sits in the band between the first and the second, so the most active adviser is two bands clear of the field. The next five, from ArentFox Schiff to Cravath, Swaine & Moore, sit one band lower again, in the 11-20 band.

Set the media list beside the market's top 10 deal advisers and only Latham & Watkins and Kirkland & Ellis appear on both. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Greenberg Traurig and Loeb & Loeb, the rest of the sector's top five, do not rank in the market's top 10. The firms a media company meets most often are not the ones that head the market's deal table, so market-wide deal volume is a poor guide to this sector: ask each firm for its media matters, not its total count.

Technology runs on a different scale. The firm at the head of the technology and software list sits in the 151-250 band, on a sector of 3,279 deals. In media, the client base is wide for the volume: 529 distinct clients appear on the sector's deals, or 1.8 deals per client, close to the 1.9 seen in technology. For a buyer, that means the firms on the list are not serving a handful of studios and networks: the work is spread across many companies, and a mid-size media business competes for the same partners' time as the largest groups.

Disputes and investigations account for 39.8% of media and entertainment deals, against 25.0% across the whole deal market. M&A follows at 28.0%, against 19.3% in the market. Capital markets work, the largest type in the market at 25.7%, drops to 12.6% in this sector. Disputes lead M&A by 11.8 points here, where in the market as a whole capital markets comes first. Some deals carry no type at all, so these shares compare one kind of work with another rather than splitting the whole.

Neighboring sectors split the other way. Sports sits even further toward contested work, with disputes at 51.3% of its deals, while disputes are only 16.9% of technology deals and 13.2% of telecommunications deals. A media company that sizes its outside counsel budget around transactions is sizing the smaller line. The larger volume runs through litigation teams, and the firms that win those mandates are judged on trial record and speed to injunction, not on closing mechanics.

Intellectual property appears on 26.3% of media and entertainment deals, a quarter of the credits, against 11.1% across the deal market. Technology and software, a sector built on code and patents, sits at 11.3%, and telecommunications at 4.1%. Only sports, at 33.1%, carries a higher IP share among the sectors compared here. Corporate and M&A is still the most frequent practice in media at 33.5%, well short of the 47.8% it reaches in technology.

The IP figure and the disputes figure are linked. Across the whole deal market, 42.3% of disputes and investigations deals carry the IP practice, so a sector rich in copyright, trademark and rights work will also read high on disputes. The general litigation practice appears on only 4.7% of media deals. The contested work in this sector is IP litigation first. When a general counsel tests a firm for a media mandate, the questions belong to copyright and trademark trial experience, not to commercial litigation in general.

Lawyers in Los Angeles worked on 16.2% of media and entertainment deals, against 8.7% of technology deals, 10.9% of sports deals and 6.8% of telecommunications deals; no other sector reaches the media share. Each figure is the share of a sector's deals, among those with a known lawyer location, that had lawyers working on them from the city: it shows where the work is done. One deal can count in several cities, so the shares overlap and add to more than the whole. New York still carries the most work, at 43.4% of media deals, above its 38.7% of technology deals. Century City, a business district of Los Angeles, is listed on its own: lawyers there worked on 3.7% of media deals.

Lateral hiring, a different measure, points the same way. In the Sartori & Partners lateral database, Los Angeles took 23.4% of the moves by lawyers with a media focus who changed firms, an index of 463 against the market's own share, and 49.1% of those lawyers carried an intellectual property practice, against 7.4% of all lateral moves. A company that wants a partner who knows its content, talent and distribution contracts should ask which of a firm's lawyers sit in Los Angeles, and should not assume the New York deal team covers that ground.

Only 10.3% of media and entertainment deals disclose a value, against 25.5% in technology, 29.7% in telecommunications and 4.6% in sports. Where a value is published, the median media deal is $753 million, above technology's $250 million and below telecommunications' $1,077.5 million. The low disclosure share fits the work mix: disputes and IP matters rarely carry a price, and many content and rights transactions stay private.

Sector volume held flat (+4.2%) over the latest settled year: 970 deals against 931 a year earlier. The deal market as a whole rose 10.6% over the same windows, to 48,216 deals from 43,590. For a buyer, a steady sector inside a growing market means the firms on this list that also head the market's deal table have more competing work elsewhere, and a company should agree staffing and response times at the start of a mandate rather than assume them.

First, do not build the panel from the market's deal table. Only Latham & Watkins and Kirkland & Ellis appear in both top 10 lists, and Loeb & Loeb sits in the same 21-40 band as Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Greenberg Traurig. Test the firms in that band on the same terms for M&A, at 28.0% of the sector's deals, and capital markets, at 12.6%, rather than sending the transactional work by default to the firms with the most deals across the market.

Second, put most of the selection effort into disputes. With disputes at 39.8% of the sector's deals and intellectual property on 26.3%, the firm that defends a catalog or a brand will see more of the company than the firm that closes its next acquisition. Ask for named copyright and trademark trial partners, and for how many of them are in Los Angeles.

Third, expect to benchmark fees without public deal values. With only 10.3% of deals disclosing a price, Sartori & Partners advises asking each firm for comparable matters by type and city, not by deal size, and checking those references with other general counsel in the sector.