Neil Jahss
Counsel

Neil Jahss has nearly two decades of experience as a civil litigator representing content creators, media-facing professionals, and a wide range of business clients. He has handled cases at every stage of litigation, including trial and appeal, and has advised clients on strategic risk and dispute resolution outside the courtroom. He is known for rigorous analysis, creative problem-solving, and written advocacy that reframes cases at critical moments.

At Cohen Williams, Neil has been entrusted with some of the firm’s most consequential briefing in high-stakes commercial and reputational disputes. He is regularly brought into matters at pivotal stages to craft dispositive motions and oppositions, appellate briefs, and strategic submissions where the framing of the issues determines the outcome. He has represented defendants in a defamation action against public relations professionals, complex fraud and alter ego disputes, and employment litigation involving an Academy Award–winning screenwriter and television showrunner. Through written advocacy and oral argument, he has produced walkaway settlements, eliminated claims through targeted motion practice, and secured multimillion-dollar post-trial fee awards. In a multi-year contract and fraud dispute, he directed the written motion practice through trial, helped obtain a near-complete jury verdict, secured a substantial fee award, and successfully defended the judgment in a unanimous appellate affirmance. He has also contributed to briefing in the Ninth Circuit and California Court of Appeal on novel First Amendment and criminal law issues, and advised a major media company concerning its First Amendment right to resist a criminal subpoena seeking unpublished documentary materials. His practice continues to include disputes involving content creators, business owners, and other media-facing professionals, reflecting both his litigation background and his experience within the entertainment industry.

Prior to joining CW, Neil spent 12 years as a litigator at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, specializing in First Amendment media defense and intellectual property law. He represented magazines, television networks, internet websites, and film and television studios in high-profile defamation, invasion of privacy, right of publicity, copyright, and trademark matters, both in the courtroom and on an advisory basis. At O’Melveny, Neil was known for his written advocacy, authoring numerous dispositive motions leading to dismissal of cases where defense clients faced exposure to several million dollars in alleged liability, as well as briefs in state and federal courts addressing cutting-edge issues affecting the entertainment industry. Among his successful representations, Neil helped secure two significant victories after trial: one for a copyright plaintiff that resulted in a multimillion-dollar verdict (following proceedings before the United States Supreme Court), and another for a libel defendant that resulted in a defense verdict.

Before joining the firm, Neil took a hiatus from representing content creators and providers in court and worked as a content creator himself in unscripted television. He won three Emmy Awards as Supervising Producer for several seasons of The Amazing Race. In addition to managing teams of editors and conceiving the structure, design, and storylines of numerous episodes of CBS’s long-running legacy reality franchise, Neil worked on formatting, casting, field, and post-production on other network programs, including Big Brother and Trading Spouses.

Neil is an alum of Harvard Law School, where he taught legal research and writing to first-year law students and served on the Board of Student Advisers, overseeing the creation of cases for the first-year moot court competition.