Allen Grubman

Allen J. Grubman is an American entertainment lawyer.

Early life

Grubman was born in and grew up in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, New York.^[2][3][4] He attended City College of New York, where he earned a BBA^[5] While attending Brooklyn Law School, where he earned a J.D., he worked in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency and as a CBS page.^[2]

Career

After graduating from Brooklyn Law School in 1967, he wrote various lawyers asking for a job. When an attorney named Walter Hofer met with him, he recalled: "I didn't know what to say, so I tried to get him to like me. I said, 'I really want to work for you, but I don't come from a very wealthy family, so I can't afford to pay you very much to hire me.'"^[4] Hofer hired him to work in his music law firm as an associate for $125-per-week ($1,100 in current dollar terms).^[2][4][6][7]

Grubman subsequently started his own business. In the 1970s, he signed obscure disco artists who later became popular, and thereafter he signed a number of stars.^[2] Grubman started a firm with fellow Brooklyn Law School graduates Paul Schindler ('71) and Arthur Indursky ('67) in 1974, and upon Schindler's departure the firm was known as Grubman Indursky & Shire.^[2][4] In 1982 he landed one of his biggest clients, Bruce Springsteen.^[2] His clients include superstars and top record companies and their executives.^[2] In 2005, the firm had grown to 30 attorneys.^[8]

In 1992 Business Week reported that Grubman was considered "the most powerful lawyer in the music business."^[2] In 2001, Newsweek called him "perhaps the music industry's wealthiest and most powerful attorney".^[9]

His clients have included Springsteen, Madonna, U2, John Mellencamp, Rod Stewart, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Luther Vandross, Elton John, Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.^[10][11]

In May 2020, the hacker group REvil claimed to have hacked and downloaded a huge amount data from Grubman's law firm, and demanded $42 million ransom to prevent release of data.^[12][13] In 2022, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Ahmet Ertegun Award category for negotiating ground-breaking long-term agreements for his clients that allow them to maintain creative control of their work.^[14]

Family

After graduating from law school, he met his first wife, Yvette Fischer Grubman.^[15] She divorced him in 1988 after 19 years of marriage, and died of cancer in 2001 at the age of 58.^[16]

They had two daughters, their elder being Lizzie Grubman, a celebrity publicist. Their younger daughter Jennifer Grubman Rothenberg holds a BA from Boston University and a J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, is President of Innovative Philanthropy, and is a member of the Board of Directors of Cardozo Law School.^{[16][17][18][19][20]}

Grubman remarried in 1991, at the New York Public Library.^[19] His second wife is Debbie Grubman (née Haimoff), a Manhattan real-estate broker.^[21][22][23] He is Jewish.^[24]

References