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In Memoriam: Joel Katz

By Thomas Spigolon and Stan Soocher
April 30, 2025

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."

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