Laura A. Wasser

Wasser's father Dennis M. Wasser, the firm's founder and lead name partner, deliberately named his daughter so that her initials would spell LAW. She heard about it when she was in elementary school. "I used to argue about everything, and he told me, 'Oh, you're destined to be an attorney. We gave you those initials.' But I fought the initials. I didn't really embrace them until I turned 40."

Wasser dislikes TMZ's moniker for her as one of her town's A-list divorce lawyers: the Disso Queen. "I reject that. It's as if you worked in a graveyard and got called a graveyard queen," she said. But she embraces the practice of law as an outgrowth of her passion for the art of discourse. "I loved rhetoric in school," she said.

And, of course, divorce. "But I almost avoid divorce at all costs," she said, referring to her practice of advising and encouraging clients to settle their disputes out of court. "My biggest accomplishments are the cases that settle and you don't hear about."

You do hear about plenty of them, though, and Wasser's job requires an insider's familiarity with Tinseltown tsuris. Wasser represented Gwen Stefani's husband Gavin Rossdale after reports surfaced that he was cheating on the singer with their nanny. Wasser's client list also includes Megan Fox, Hilary Duff and Mariah Carey. How about Jennifer Garner retaining Wasser after Ben Affleck was said to have his own nanny scandal? "No comment," Wasser said.

And what about her rumored representation of Kourtney Kardashian? "She's not married," Wasser said. "I represent her sisters." Other bold face names that have appeared on her client list include Maria Shriver, Stevie Wonder and Britney Spears.

Wasser authored the 2013 book "It Doesn't Have to Be That Way: How to Divorce Without Destroying Your Family or Bankrupting Yourself." She recently got certified in the discipline known as collaborative family law. "I immersed myself in the formalized training," she said. "A lot of the theories are similar to what I've been doing instinctively. It's the wave of the future: stay out of court. Do it in a conference room."

? John Roemer