{"id":3900,"date":"2025-01-27T20:28:59","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T20:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/meet-the-attorneys-in-not-like-us-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2025-01-27T20:28:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T20:28:59","slug":"meet-the-attorneys-in-not-like-us-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/meet-the-attorneys-in-not-like-us-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Attorneys In ‘Not Like Us’ Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tAs the legal battle over Kendrick Lamar<\/a>\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us\u201d gets underway, both sides have retained top attorneys \u2013 with Drake<\/a> hiring a lawyer who battles conspiracy theories and Universal Music Group turning to one of its favorite law firms.<\/p>\n

\n\tFiled earlier this month, Drake\u2019s case accuses UMG of defaming him by boosting Lamar\u2019s track, which attacks Drake as a \u201ccertified pedophile\u201d and became a chart-topping hit in its own right. The star says his own label \u201cwaged a campaign against him,\u201d spreading a \u201cmalicious narrative\u201d that it knew was false.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe courtroom showdown has drawn intense publicity, and it\u2019s not hard to see why: It pits one of the world\u2019s biggest stars against the world\u2019s biggest music company after a lucrative, decade-plus partnership, over a smash hit song by a critically-adored rapper \u2013 one who\u2019s set to perform at the Super Bowl next month, by the way. It also represents something of an unprecedented move in the history of hip hop: A lawsuit over a rap beef that allegedly went too far.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo handle that kind of high-profile case, Drake has hired Michael Gottlieb<\/strong>, a former federal prosecutor who once served as an associate counsel in President Barack Obama\u2019s White House. Gottlieb is currently a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, a national law firm with a well-known music industry practice that has repeatedly been featured on Billboard<\/em>\u2018s yearly Top Music Lawyers.<\/p>\n

\n\tBased on his recent work, Gottlieb is unlikely to be intimidated by the media attention surrounding Drake\u2019s lawsuit. He\u2019s currently representing two Georgia poll workers in efforts to collect a huge verdict against Rudy Guiliani over his lies about election fraud, a case that just settled earlier this month after high-profile court hearings in New York. He\u2019s also repping\u00a0Blake Lively in her battles against \u201cIt Ends With Us\u201d co-star Justin Baldoni, including her harassment case as well as Baldoni\u2019s libel countersuit \u2013 cases that have transcended the courtroom and crossed firmly into the messier world of public relations.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Lively\u2019s suit, she says she was the victim of a sophisticated \u201cdigital retaliation campaign\u201d centered \u201cmanipulation\u201d of social media designed to destroy her reputation across the internet. Those kinds of claims are nothing new for Gottlieb, who has made a name for himself<\/a> in recent years filing defamation lawsuits on behalf of alleged victims of online disinformation.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2023, he won the $148 million defamation verdict against Giuliani. Before that, he represented the brother of Seth Rich, a Democratic staffer whose murder became grist for right-wing conspiracy theories, as well as the owners of the D.C. pizzeria at the center of Pizzagate \u2014 an infamous online hoax centered on false claims of child sex trafficking that later sparked a real-life shooting.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn bringing Drake\u2019s case to court, Gottlieb has raised similar allegations against UMG. He argues that the label used secret payments and bot streams to help spread a \u201cdangerous conspiracy theory\u201d about his client on the internet, putting the rapper at risk of serious physical harm. He even cites the Pizzagate shooting by name, calling a shooting at Drake\u2019s house the \u201c2024 equivalent\u201d of that earlier incident: \u201cUMG\u2019s greed yielded real world consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDefending against those claims, court records show that UMG has retained the law firm Sidley Austin<\/strong> \u2014 one of the largest of the country\u2019s elite \u201cBigLaw\u201d firms, and one that has repeatedly repped the music giant in past legal battles.<\/p>\n

\n\tSidley attorneys represented UMG when the label was the named as a defendant in the copyright lawsuit filed by Marvin Gaye\u2019s heirs over Robin Thicke and Pharrell\u2019s chart-topper \u201cBlurred Lines\u201d \u2013 a case that transfixed the music industry for years. The firm also handled certain stages of a long-running copyright case filed by UMG\u2019s Capitol Records against the video sharing site Vimeo over internet takedown rules.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore recently, Sidley defended UMG against a class action accusing the label of unfairly refusing to allow hundreds of artists win back control of their copyrights \u2014 eventually winning a key ruling that effectively gutted the case. The firm also won a decision last year killing another case filed by the hip hop duo Black Sheep, who accused UMG of securing its stake in Spotify by giving the streamer a \u201csweetheart\u201d licensing rate that left artists underpaid by millions.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe firm has also handled numerous music matters outside the UMG orbit. Sidley attorneys have also repped Warner Music Group \u2013 including in transactional work like the label\u2019s joint venture deal<\/a> with Elliot Grainge\u2019s label 10K Projects and its $400 million acquisition of 300 Entertainment, as well as defending the company against litigation like a copyright termination case filed by Dwight Yoakam.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs of Monday, the only Sidley attorney to formally appear in Drake\u2019s case is Nicholas P. Crowell<\/strong>, a New York attorney focused on complex commercial litigation, though he\u2019ll almost certainly be joined by other firm attorneys as the case progresses. Top members of the music team at Sidley include litigator Rollin A. Ransom<\/strong> and deals attorney Matthew C. Thompson<\/strong> \u2013 both of whom have also repeatedly been named to Billboard\u2019s list of Top Music Lawyers.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf recent work is any indication, the attorneys at Sidley will take an aggressive approach to a lawsuit that UMG itself has already publicly blasted as \u201cillogical\u201d and \u201cfrivolous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRansom and other Sidley attorneys are currently defending UMG against Limp Bizkit\u2019s $200 million royalties lawsuit, a case filed in October that claims the band had \u201cnot seen a dime in royalties\u201d because of \u201csystemic\u201d and \u201cfraudulent\u201d policies. The lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case just a month later, ripping the lawsuit\u2019s \u201centire narrative\u201d as \u201cfiction\u201d and \u201cbased on a fallacy.\u201d Last week, a judge sided with those arguments and rejected core aspects of the band\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe firm will file its first response to Drake\u2019s lawsuit in March.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the legal battle over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us\u201d gets underway, both sides have retained top attorneys \u2013 with Drake hiring a lawyer who battles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[93,303,1299],"class_list":["post-3900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-attorneys","tag-lawsuit","tag-meet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}