Entertainment attorney Quincy Newell has relaunched his namesake law firm, 18 months after shelving it to jump-start a similar practice at another firm.
Newell announced the relaunch of the firm, Newell Law Firm PC, in October, and has opened an office in Century City and has five total attorneys onboard. He said he intends to continue its focus as an entertainment and business boutique firm.
“Our intention is really to be specialized and super-serve the creative community, but we don’t only deal with talent and production companies,” he said. “We’ll also work on the organization side as well.”
Having initially formed the firm as a solo practice in 2020, Newell then put it on hold to join downtown’s Sanders Roberts LLP, where he was tasked with building an entertainment transaction practice from the ground up.
Within the entertainment and business sphere, Newell said the firm will focus on transactional work but will be able to handle litigation as well. Committed to staying at boutique size, Newell said it’s not “unreasonable” to see a buildout of around 10 attorneys. He said he is seeking attorneys who have backgrounds in the business and creative side of entertainment, so it’s likely he’ll be hiring a lot of onetime in-house counsels for production companies.
That detail speaks to his own experience. Newell spent more than 30 years as an entertainment executive, doing time with Warner Bros. Discovery, Universal Music Group, Rhino Records and Paramount. In 2005, he was a cofounder of Codeblack Films, a production company targeting Black audiences that in 2012 was acquired by Santa Monica-based Lionsgate Films. Newell stayed on as an executive in the deal.
“Being that my career has been in running and building companies, that is something I actually have experience in and actually enjoy. That served me well throughout my career. I understood operation and I understood all the pieces that needed to work together,” Newell explained. “I look at this no different, in that I am building a business, that I want to understand the business, that I want to scale and profit and want to create an operation that everyone can benefit from.”
