Power Lawyers 2012

Bandlow makes this list for going the extra mile: He not only defends clients, he stars in movies about them. Consider Big Boys Gone Bananas!, a documentary about Dole Food's lawsuit against Swedish filmmakers who chronicled the plight of Nicaraguan farmworkers. When Dole claimed the film defamed the company, Bandlow persuaded it to back off, prompting a follow-up movie about the legal drama. "I've been traveling around the globe speaking about the film," says Bandlow. "In Sweden, corporations can't sue for defamation, so they were simply amazed that there could be a lawsuit against these little Swedish filmmakers, and it caused a massive boycott of Dole." The free-speech advocate is now defending filmmaker Lauren Greenfield and her husband, Frank Evers, whose doc The Queen of Versailles, about difficulties facing the owners of the biggest private home in America, prompted a defamation suit on the eve of its Sundance premiere. He's also defending director Robert Rodriguez against a woman who claims she conceived the idea for Machete.

➻ My legal philosophy "To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln: 'Discourage litigation and be a peacemaker if you can. If you can't, go kick ass.' "

LIST: THR's Power Lawyers 2012

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