How Entertainment Law Star Got Her Start—and Kept On Running
When Lisa Bonner graduated from law school at New York University in 1997, she knew she didn’t want to practice at a BigLaw firm.
So, actively avoiding the opportunities to do so that await an NYU grad, she focused on becoming an entertainment lawyer instead, reports the New York Law Journal, in an article reprinted by New York Lawyer (reg. req.).
An investment banker before she pursued to a second career in the law, Bonner was apparently more comfortable with risk-taking than many of her newly graduated peers. She moved to Los Angeles without a job, and started networking to try to find one with a small boutique. Initially, she did volunteer legal work for a battered women’s shelter, calling around to some 20 nonprofits before she got even this unpaid position.
A conversation with a fellow passenger on a ski tour bus led to a job with his law firm, focusing on litigation and bankruptcy work. Then, a year and a half later, her former California bar exam study partner called and invited her to work for his start-up entertainment company, taking a $30,000 pay cut to do so. “Ms. Bonner had always shared her career dreams with whoever would listen—and her study buddy thought of her first,” the legal publication recounts.
The company, Digital Entertainment Network, was a success, and Bonner learned on the job as the three-lawyer legal team she had joined quickly grew to 30. Meanwhile, she networked and spoke at professional gatherings. It was at one of these events that she was approached by Londell McMillan, a high-profile entertainment lawyer and fellow NYU law grad, to see if she would open a Los Angeles office for him specializing in Internet law. She would and did.
Then, after seven years there, her career has taken another unexpected turn: Bonner became an entertainment law partner at the New York office of a bigger-name firm than she might have earlier anticipated: Dreier, a 175-attorney nontraditional law office that appeals to entrepreneurs. (As discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post, the New York City-based firm, which was founded in 1996, bills itself as “a more responsive and innovative alternative to conventional ‘large-firm’ lawyering.”)
Bonner got where she is by working hard, taking chances and trusting her intuition to guide her, points out Gail Cutter, the SJL Attorney Search senior managing director who authored the New York Law Journal article.
Says Bonner herself: “You don’t get Google directions to guide your career.”
