In many ways, the founders of what is today known as Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein Lezcano Bobb & Dang were like any other ambitious young attorneys when they launched the firm back in 1989.
“There’s always an inclination to want to start your own business and be the captains of your ship, the makers of your own destiny,” says Nina Shaw, who was one of the original partners, alongside founder emeritus Ernie Del and current partner Jean Tanaka. “And we wanted to be within the group of boutique firms that even then were preeminent in the talent representation business.”
But there was also another goal in mind. Too often, Shaw found that she was the only woman or person of color — never mind Black woman — in the room. So it was baked into the firm’s DNA that it would represent the underrepresented, in its staff and its clients, as well as in the larger legal and entertainment communities.
Today, Del Shaw’s staff is 62.5% women and 57.5% people of color, and the firm has a long history of cutting game-changing deals for a diverse roster of clients that includes Cedric the Entertainer, Ayo Edebiri, Paul Reiser, Lena Waithe, Warner Bros. TV Group chair and CEO Channing Dungey, FX Networks chairman John Landgraf, Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o, filmmakers Reggie Rock Bythewood and Gina Prince-Bythewood, and model and TV personality Chrissy Tiegen and her husband, musician and EGOT club member John Legend.
Partner Gordon Bobb says that when he joined Del Shaw as an associate in 2000, he noticed how much they differed from his previous employers, who, while not hostile to him as a Black man, placed little importance on diversity.
“I think what was realized at the inception of the firm back in 1989 — and that Hollywood only came to realize within the last four years— is that, if you include more perspectives, you can actually service people a little better,” says Bobb.
Shaw’s perspective was formed as a child growing up in Harlem, where she was an avid fan of the arts, regularly taking in everything from movies and theater to museums, ballet and Leonard Bernstein at Lincoln Center. “If it was free and happening in New York, my mother was going to make sure we saw it,” she says.
At the same time, Shaw was already fixated on law, as evidenced by the “Future Lawyer” caption under her senior high school yearbook photo. After earning her JD from Columbia Law School in 1979, she moved west to work in the home office of the venerable L.A.-based international firm O’Melveny & Myers, where she did work for clients such as Norman Lear’s Tandem/T.A.T. Prods., renowned for its pioneering progressive and diverse sitcoms, and which at the time was making such shows “The Jeffersons.” In 1981, she moved to the boutique firm Dern, Mason, Swerdlow and Floum, and made partner five years later. It was there that she landed the first big client she could call her own, Robert Guillaume, star of the hit sitcom “Benson,” whom she signed after bonding with his then-wife.
Del Shaw launched when a group of attorneys broke off from that firm to establish their own practice dedicated to transactional entertainment law — it was originally known as Del, Rubel, Shaw, Mason & Derin.
“Not many people understood Ernie Del’s desire to be in business with me when he could have been in business with a go-getter guy at one of the other boutique firms,” says Shaw. “But he was so shocked and surprised that people would even suggest to him that this wasn’t the best thing for him.”
Shaw landed a few other high-profile clients in those early days, such as James Earl Jones, but most of her roster additions were up-and-comers making artistic and commercial breakthroughs, like writer/director/actress Kasi Lemmons, director F. Gary Gray and former clients Jamie Foxx and Ice Cube.
