In Memoriam: Joel Katz

Entertainment trade magazines called lawyer Joel Katz, who died in Atlanta in April at the age of 80, “one of the most powerful attorneys in the music business” who “ruled the music industry from Atlanta for decades.”
Katz founded the entertainment and media law practice at Greenburg Traurig — which had only a peripheral entertainment law practice until then — following a 1998 merger with his namesake Atlanta firm Katz Smith & Cohen to open Greenberg’s Atlanta office. At the time, Katz said he had his eye on the growing Latin music market but, “I could never have had that as a profit center in Atlanta. I wanted a Miami office and [the Miami-based] Greenberg Traurig was involved to some degree in the Latin music business."
He resigned from Greenburg Traurig at the end of 2020, 11 months after Deborah Dugan, the ousted chief of the Grammys, leveled an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint alleging retaliation and accusing Katz of making unwanted sexual advances. Katz denied the claims. He subsequently joined Barnes & Thornburg as senior counsel.
Katz grew up in Queens, NY, and obtained a law degree from the University of Tennessee. After passing the Tennessee bar, he moved to Atlanta to work for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, before starting a solo practice. “I didn’t have any clients,” Katz recalled during an interview with Entertainment Law & Finance at Greenberg Traurig’s Manhattan office. “But after about two weeks, a banker who’d taken a course I taught at Georgia State University told me that he knew someone who needed a lawyer. That turned out to be James Brown, who’d fired his lawyer in New York. I worked on James Brown’s new recording contract with Polydor.”
Katz’s clients over the years ranged from James Brown and Michael Jackson to Willie Nelson, Alan Jackson, Jimmy Buffett, George Strait, B.B. King, Ludacris, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne and the group TLC. He also handled major industry deals that included a $600 million pact in 2016 for longtime client National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) to keep the Grammy Awards and other shows on CBS, and Ithaca Holdings’ $300 million purchase of Big Machine Records in 2018. Katz also served as a general counsel to Farm Aid.
In 2017, Billboard Magazine named Katz its “Lawyer of the Year.” Katz helped create and fund what is now the Joel A. Katz Music and Entertainment Business Program at Kennesaw State University north of Atlanta. The University of Tennessee College of Law library is named the Joel A. Katz Law Library.
Steve Sidman, today a co-chair of the global media, entertainment and sports practice at Pierson Ferdinand, began working as a summer associate for Katz in 1994 at Katz Smith & Cohen. He went on to remain with Katz as an associate and shareholder at Greenberg for 16 years before opening his own firm. Atlanta-based Sidman said in an interview that the influence Katz had on his 30-year career was “immeasurable” based on the “lessons that I learned, the experiences I had” and the access to Katz’s phone contacts.
“It continues to open doors that would have not been open to me,” Sidman said. He said Katz “did not stand on ceremony” and did “whatever he had to do” to complete a deal.
"He did not really care about what it looked like from a formality perspective,” Sidman said.