Jill Basinger is one of the entertainment industry’s most trusted litigators and leads Stris & Maher LLP’s Entertainment, Media, and Sports Litigation Practice. Clients turn to Basinger to handle their most consequential disputes, drawing on her rare combination of elite litigation experience, executive leadership, and deep industry knowledge. She represents agencies, studios, production companies, talent, executives, investors, media organizations, and other prominent industry participants in high-stakes litigation, arbitrations, investigations, and business disputes.
Over the course of her career, Basinger has handled some of the entertainment industry’s most sensitive and complex disputes. For more than a decade, Basinger was a partner at Glaser Weil, where she represented a who’s who of showrunners, actors, broadcasters, journalists, writers, producers, production companies, financiers, agents, agencies, and other above- and below-the-line talent. She has tried, arbitrated, mediated, or otherwise resolved disputes across a broad range of substantive areas, including defamation, harassment, non-disclosure agreements, breach of contract, fraud, publicity and privacy rights, employee mobility, trade secrets, family estate disputes, intellectual property, commission disputes, profit participation, and project finance.
Lawdragon Honors
| Honor | Year | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| The 2026 Lawdragon 500 Leading Global Litigators | 2026 | International Disputes, Entertainment, Estates |
Basinger also brings a valuable in-house perspective to her practice. Following her time at Glaser Weil, Basinger served as the inaugural Chief Legal Officer of Discovery Land Company, the leading global developer and operator of luxury private residential communities and resorts. In that role, she led legal strategy and advised the CEO and executive management on the company’s highest-stakes matters, overseeing complex litigation, corporate governance, major transactions (including mergers and joint ventures), and regulatory matters.
Beyond her practice, Basinger is committed to expanding opportunities for the next generation of advocates. She serves on the board of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Debate League, which provides competitive debate programs to students in underserved public high schools throughout Los Angeles. Through her leadership, she helps young people develop the critical-thinking, public-speaking, and advocacy skills that open doors to higher education and professional success.
Basinger began her career as a law clerk for the Honorable A. Andrew Hauk, Chief Judge Emeritus of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. She received her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was Articles Editor for the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law, and her B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was a member of the twice national champion CEDA Debate team