Lisa Davis

Education

Practice Areas

Entertainment

Branded Entertainment

Celebrity Branding

Intellectual Property

Publishing

Sports

Executive Compensation & Employment

Interactive Entertainment

Hospitality Law

Theatre

Career

Lisa E. Davis is a partner and Co-Chair of the firm's Entertainment Group. She serves on the firm's Policy Committee and is Co-Chair of the firm's Diversity Committee. She represents businesses and celebrities in the film, television, publishing, music, theatre, and sports industries.

Ms. Davis has been ranked as a New York-area “Super Lawyer” since 2007 and was featured on the cover of Super Lawyers magazine in a piece on her career and advocacy for racial justice. She is recognized in Who's Who Legal: Telecoms Media & Entertainment 2024, by Best Lawyers in America in the 2023 and 2024 editions for Entertainment Law, in the 2023 edition of Chambers USA for Media & Entertainment: Theater, by The New York Law Journal as one of only seven 2022 Diversity Initiative honorees, Crain’s New York Business on their 2023 Notable Women in Law list and 2022 Notable Diverse Leaders in Law list, The Hollywood Reporter’s Power Lawyers 2023, 2021, and 2020 list of New York's Top 20 Entertainment Attorneys, Variety’s 2020 Legal Impact Report, by City & State as one of New York’s “Responsible 100” (2019), by the Black Entertainment & Sports Lawyers Association (2019 Beacon of Industry Award), by Crain’s New York Business 2017 as a “Leading Woman Lawyer in NYC,” by The National Law Journal (“Outstanding Women Lawyers” 2015), by Savoy magazine in their “Most Influential Black Lawyers of 2015,” and in Variety’s “Power of Women New York Impact Report” (2014). Additionally, she is listed among the country’s leading media and entertainment lawyers by The Legal 500.

Ms. Davis advises on a full range of transactional matters - focusing on film (both feature and documentary), television, publishing, live stage and branded entertainment. Ms. Davis represents directors, writers and performers in film and television, as well as playwrights and bloggers. In her sports practice, she represents top athletes in their “off the field” activities, including endorsements and investments.

Prior to joining Frankfurt Kurnit, she clerked for the Honorable Constance Baker Motley in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Ms. Davis is a graduate of Harvard University (B.A., 1981) and New York University (J.D., 1985), where she was a staff member of the New York University Law Review and a Root-Tilden scholar. She is admitted to practice in New York.