Shawn C. Holley

On July 1, Holley was made a name partner at the civil and criminal litigation boutique she joined at its inception in 2006.

“When we started in 2006, I was the only lawyer at Kinsella who had not come from Greenberg,” Holley said, referring to the 11-attorney exodus from Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP that made up most of Kinsella’s original roster. “But Howard Weitzman vouched for me. I came from the scrappy public defender world and from handling police misconduct cases with Johnny Cochran’s firm to here, an entertainment firm in the world of beautiful celebrities.”

Her client list has included the Kardashian and Jenner families, Shia LaBeouf, Reggie Bush, Rosario Dawson, Kanye West, Justin Bieber, Lindsay Lohan and many others. She is the executive producer of Hulu’s upcoming legal drama Reasonable Doubt alongside producers Kerry Washington and Larry Wilmore.

Her current marquee client is Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer, whom Major League Baseball placed on administrative leave on July 2 amid an investigation of sexual assault claims by a San Diego woman who had obtained a temporary domestic violence restraining order against Bauer in June, asserting he had choked and punched her during two rough sex encounters.

In August, at a four-day hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Holley persuaded the judge to dissolve the order and rule that Bauer did not pose a threat to the woman and that there was “no supportable evidence” that he would harm her in the future. Judge Dianna J. Gould-Saltman, reacting to text messages and other evidence Holley presented, plus Holley’s lengthy cross-examination of the woman, said Bauer honored the boundaries the woman had set for their sexual encounters but couldn’t know about limits she had not expressed to him. Hill v. Bauer, 21STRO03198 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed June 29, 2021).

“This was only a restraining order hearing, but it felt like a much bigger deal,” Holley said. “This was like a war, with so many moving parts—Major League Baseball, the Dodgers, a pending criminal investigation, a relentless media.”

Holley gained experience representing celebrity athletes in trouble as a member of O.J. Simpson’s “dream team” successful criminal defense in the 1990s, working with the late Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. “Many were very angry at the defense team after the acquittal,” she said, “but Johnnie taught me to be myself. You don’t have to put on a mean, adversarial demeanor. Try to be a nice friendly person.”

- John Roemer