A Columbia Law School graduate and former partner at Frankfurt, Garbus, Klein & Selz, now Franfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, one of the country's top entertainment and media law firms, Russell Smith has over 21 years of litigation and other legal experience. He has handled trials and/or appeals in dozens of federal and state courts across the country, including cases in New York, California, Illinois, Texas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi and Ohio. More recently in non-litigation matters, he has been among the legal counsel of choice for the television and film production industries, representing broadcast networks, motion picture studios, and production companies from Hollywood to New York, London, Dublin, and Mumbai.

Russell has represented some of the most high-profile companies in the world, including such examples as HBO, Sony Pictures Television, 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, Pearson, John Wiley & Sons, Reed Elsevier, Coquette Productions (the production company of Courteney Cox Arquette and David Arquette), Miramax Films, MTV Networks, Universal Records, Simon & Schuster, Channel Four Television (UK), American Broadcasting Companies, Def Jam Records, Penguin Books, King World Productions, Warner Books, Matthew Marks Gallery, Inside Edition, American Playhouse, R/GA Digital Studios, Spin Magazine, and the Estates of Elvis Presley, Andy Warhol, and John Cheever.

He also has worked for an unusually diverse range of prominent individuals, such as Sacha Baron Cohen ("Borat"), Philip Glass, John Kerry, Erykah Badu, Graham Norton, Boy George, Chuck D, Don Hewitt, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Donald Trump, Spike Lee, Jeffrey Toobin, Terry McMillan, Errol Morris, George C. Wolfe, Sean McPhilemy, Chris Byrne, Dean Koontz, Nelson Demille, Bobby Brown, Richard Gere, Frank and Kathy Lee Gifford, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

While at Frankfurt Kurnit in New York, and more recently with Smith Dornan Dehn, Russell has handled some of the country's most significant litigation matters. He is currently production counsel, and among the defense counsel, for claims against "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." He is also counsel for "Death of a President," the controversial film about the fictional assassination of President Bush. He planned and helped implement the successful multistate litigation by the widow and children of author John Cheever, to retain control of Cheever's uncollected stories. He devised and wrote the petition for a writ of mandamus which lifted a broadcast ban affecting over 100 television stations in In re King World, resulting in the federal courts' nationwide adoption of a new device for the overturning of temporary restraining orders against the media. He conceived, and played a major part in executing, the winning strategy of Channel Four Television (UK) and filmmaker Paul Yule in their censorship battle to defend their documentary, "Damned in the U.S.A.," against a lawsuit and injunction filed and obtained by Rev. Donald Wildmon and his right-wing American Family Association.

In other fights for free expression, Russell wrote the briefs that allowed the publication of Jeffrey Toobin's critique of the Iran-Contra prosecution under Lawrence Walsh, and he won precedent-setting victories against libel suits brought against best-selling authors Terry McMillan and Nelson Demille. On behalf of Public Enemy rapper Chuck D, he won a seven-figure settlement in a widely watched suit against malt liquor manufacturers and marketers who traded on his client's image.

As pro bono Special Counsel to the Coalition for the Homeless, Russell won a billion-dollar victory for indigent families with children in foster care. Although this victory was overturned on appeal, it ultimately resulted in improvement of the beleaguered foster care system in New York State.

Russell has written numerous legal articles for trade newspapers and law textbooks, and has lectured on several occasions, both at Columbia Law School and in various public forums. He has been interviewed repeatedly on television and radio, and has been quoted countless times by news publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek.

After a one-year sabbatical spent on the northwest coast of Ireland, Russell decided to move permanently from New York City and set a different kind of law firm, originally headquartered in the fishing village of Montauk, on the tip of Long Island. In addition to his desire to live and work in a rural, coastal setting, Russell wanted to work at a firm with a low overhead and an emphasis on representing not only famous names, but also creative and other persons who may have difficulty affording large law firm rates. Begun in 1996 as an unusual experiment, the firm has flourished. It has attracted an exciting variety of national and international clients, and several outstanding attorneys have joined. The firm also has set up expanded offices in midtown Manhattan, as well as satellite offices in India, and in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina and in Roanoke, Virginia. (For a profile of the firm, click here, for a client list, click here, and for a description of some of the high profile cases our attorneys have handled, click here.)

The first matter Russell handled with our firm was "the Rent case," which he filed to obtain dramaturg Lynn Thomson's fair share of royalties and credit for what the courts recognized was her role in radically transforming Rent from an unproduceable draft into a Pulitzer Prize-winning success. The case resulted in one of the most widely reported trials of 1998, followed by what is probably the most important appellate decision in the last few decades on the subject of joint authorship. In the end, after the courts ruled that Lynn had made a significant and copyrightable contribution to Rent that might form the basis for an infringement suit, Russell obtained a favorable settlement that addressed all of the issues she had raised.

One high-profile case after another has followed, keeping Russell and the other attorneys of the firm busy in several regions of the country and even overseas.

Russell's journey to the field of law was a winding one, during which he acquired experience and skills that have proved not only unusual, but also useful. Like many young people at the time, Russell was influenced dramatically by the anti-Viet Nam War movement, in which he participated as a teenager in the late 1960's and early 1970's. At age 18, after graduating from The Putney School in Vermont, he decided to defer going to college and went instead to work for two years as a full-time organizer for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.

He then enrolled at Columbia College and successfully completed his freshman year there, only to be drawn back into labor organizing, this time for a four-year stint as union leader and lead negotiator for the Chemical Workers Union in Bayonne, New Jersey. While at the same time working in a chemical plant and running the union, he went to night school at Rutgers University and earned a bachelor's degree in Labor Studies, with High Honors.

As a union leader, Russell achieved notable success in leading an 11-week strike against one of the most dangerous chemical plants of the multinational corporation ICI Americas, surprising the company by setting up simultaneous 24-hour picket lines at their plants in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Delaware. As hundreds of supply trucks were turned away, ICI finally settled the bitter strike, which ultimately resulted in better safety conditions and limits on forced overtime, as well as higher wages.

The company was pleased when Russell, inspired by the outstanding lawyers he had hired for the union, left both the company and the union and moved to Columbia Law School, where he graduated in the top 25% of his class. While at Columbia, he served as an administrative staff intern at Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA), and was an editor of the Columbia/VLA Journal of Law & the Arts. Upon graduation from law school, he worked for two years as an associate at Hall, Dickler, Lawler, Kent & Friedman, a prominent media law firm, before landing a position at the top entertainment and media firm on the East coast, Frankfurt Garbus, where he remained for eight years, being named a partner in 1993.

When the tragic debacle in Iraq was being hatched in The White House, Russell and other attorneys at our firm founded and organized Attorneys Against the War, an active association of hundreds of lawyers from major firms across the United States and Britain, which deployed platoons of suit-wearing attorneys into the streets during anti-war marches and added an extra dimension to the peace movement.

Russell enjoys handling "big city" and other interesting legal matters, and helping to manage our global operations, from Mysore, India, with our off-shoring subsidiary, SDD Global Solutions Pvt Ltd.