Practice Areas
Representing content publishers—U.S. and foreign; digital, print and broadcast; and for-profit and nonprofit—Laura Handman draws upon her four decades of experience helping her clients bring to light newsworthy information and then defending them from complaint through appeal. Along the way, Laura has established many of the key precedents that have strengthened the protection for content – winning the first U.S. decisions to refuse to enforce foreign libel judgments, leading to passage of the SPEECH ACT; establishing the standard in New York for libel by implication; establishing a heightened standard before, the government can access records of a customer's expressive content purchases, establishing that internet rankings are opinion, defeating use of RICO in libel suits against advocacy groups and securing for satire protection from libel and right of publicity claims. Laura is on the executive committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Laura is ranked Band 1 Nationwide in First Amendment Litigation and Band 1 in Media & Entertainment in Washington, D.C., in Chambers and was Law 360's MVP in Entertainment and Media (2016).
Laura is the Co-Chair of the Appellate practice at Davis Wright Tremaine.
Professional Memberships
Executive Committee – Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Board of Overseers, Columbia Journalism Review
Co-Chair, Bench Bar Media Dialogue, Council for Court Excellence
Testimony, House Judiciary Committee, Maryland General Assembly – Testified on behalf of MD/DE/DC Press Association and the Washington Post against bill to establish statutory and descendible right of publicity in Maryland, February 2013
Testimony, Hearing on Libel Tourism (libel suits brought against U.S.-based defendants in foreign countries) and HR 6146 (related amendment to federal judicial code), Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law of the House Judiciary Committee, February 2009
Advisory Board, Digital Media Law Project, Online Media Legal Network, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School
Co-Taught "Journalism, Law & Society," Columbia Journalism School, Summer 2011
Co-chair, Dialogue Project: Conversations with Bench, Bar and Press, Council for Court Excellence, 2010–present
Co-chair, Project Committee, "Journalists' Handbook to the Courts in the District of Columbia," published by the Council for Court Excellence, 2009
Executive Committee, Council for Court Excellence, 2010-2020
Founder and past Chair, Media Law Committee, Arts, Entertainment and Sports Law Section, District of Columbia Bar
Past Chair, Communications and Media Law Committee, Association of the Bar of the City of New York
Past President, Defense Counsel Section, Libel Defense Resource Center
