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David Schulz is a partner in the firm, resident in New York, where he has defended the rights of journalists and news organizations for the past quarter of a century.  He has litigated libel, privacy, access and newsgathering claims in the trial courts of more than 20 states, and regularly represents news organizations on appeals before both state and federal tribunals.  Among other significant cases, Mr. Schulz successfully prosecuted access litigation by the Hartford Courant to compel the disclosure of sealed dockets in cases being secretly litigated in Connecticut’s state courts, and the challenge by 17 media organizations to the closure of jury selection in the Martha Stewart criminal prosecution.  He successfully defended against invasion of privacy claims brought by Navy SEALS whose photos with injured Iraqi prisoners were discovered on-line by a reporter, and has prevailed in Freedom of Information Act litigation pursued by The Associated Press to compel the release of files relating to detainees held by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay and to records of the military service of President George W. Bush.

Mr. Schulz is described as an “incredibly skilled” litigation strategist and a “walking encyclopedia” of media law by Chambers USA (Chambers & Partners, 2006), and is recognized as one of the nation’s premier First Amendment lawyers by The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward/White, 2005).  Concentrating in media law, First Amendment and intellectual property, he has represented a broad range of media clients, including international newswire services, national and local newspapers, television networks and station owners, magazine and book publishers, cable news networks, and Internet content providers.

Mr. Schulz has served as chair of the Communications and Media Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, as a member of the Governing Board of the American Bar Association’s Forum on Communications Law, and as President of the Defense Counsel Section of the Media Law Resource Center.  For more than a decade he was a member of the New York Committee on Open Government, the state agency responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the open meetings, freedom of information and personal privacy laws in New York.

A Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, Mr. Schulz regularly writes and speaks on media law issues.  For many years he co-chaired a biennial conference on “Newsgathering and Libel Litigation,” sponsored by the Practicing Law Institute, and he served as a member of the Sedona Conference Working Group on Protective Orders, Confidentiality & Public Access.  He is the author of numerous articles and reports, including Judicial Regulation of the Press? Revisiting the Limited Jurisdiction of Federal Courts and the Scope of Constitutional Protection for Newsgathering, 2002 LDRC Bulletin 121 (April 2002); Internet Jurisdiction, Choice of Law Issues, ISP Immunity and Anonymous On-Line Speech, 2 Internet Law & Business 997 (Oct. 2001) (with M. Schachter), and Newsgathering as a Protected Activity, in Freedom of Information and Freedom of Expression: Essays in Honour of Sir David William (J. Beatson & Y. Cripps eds., Oxford University Press 2000).

Mr. Schulz received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he has served for more than twenty years on the Board of Trustees.  He received his law degree from The Yale Law School, and holds a Master’s degree in economics from Yale University.  Mr. Schulz began his legal career in New York at Rogers & Wells, which later merged with London-based Clifford Chance, and served as head of the media litigation group at that firm before joining LSKS in 2003.  He is admitted to practice in the courts of New York and the District of Columbia, as well as the United States Supreme Court, the United States Courts for Appeals for the Second, Third, Fourth, Ninth, Tenth and District of Columbia Circuits, and the United States District Courts for New York and the District of Columbia.