Overview
“Davida Brook is one of the best lawyers there is. A steadfast advisor, a brilliant legal mind, and she fights like hell to win.”
John Poulos, CEO of Dominion Voting Systems
“Davida Brook is one of strongest litigators I have ever worked with. She is deeply creative, a true client partner and is deeply invested in building relationships.’”
Chambers
“Davida has great litigation instincts, she’s great at understanding when to push or not. She is also always there to listen to concerns.”
Chambers
“Intelligent, articulate, and always well prepared. There isn’t anyone I’d rather have representing me at trial.”
Steven Lamar, Beats by Dre concept creator & Founder, ROAM Audio
“Davida is tremendous on her feet.”
Chambers
“Davida has amazing commercial knowledge.”
Chambers
“Davida is the rare litigator who is as formidable on a complex legal brief as she is in front of a jury or a camera. She sees three moves ahead, keeps her composure when the stakes are highest, and makes you feel like the most important client she has.”
Ann Fandozzi, former CEO of Ritchie Brothers, current CEO of Convergint
When a case will be decided as much in the court of public opinion as in the court of law, companies and individuals turn to Davida Brook. Litigating cases that shape industries and define the boundaries of modern media, the first amendment, and intellectual property law, she is trusted by major corporations and high-profile individuals at moments of extraordinary legal, business, and reputational consequence. As such, Ms. Brook is not a single-issue specialist. Rather, she is known for counselling her clients through those bet-the-company moments, wherever they may arise.
In 2026, Chambers and Partners ranked Ms. Brook Band 1 in California for Litigation, and Forbes named her to its list of America’s Top Lawyers and its inaugural list of America’s Top Women Lawyers. These recognitions place her among the most highly regarded trial lawyers in the country.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Ms. Brook has rapidly built one of the most active AI and content-rights dockets in the country, representing the creators and publishers whose work underpins the raw material of the AI economy. She is co-lead counsel to The New York Times in its landmark copyright suit against Microsoft and OpenAI – the first case brought by a major newspaper publisher against the developers of a large language model. A year into that dispute, the Southern District of New York tapped her to serve as Liaison Counsel for all News Plaintiffs in the consolidated multidistrict litigation, In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation, which now encompasses claims by more than a dozen publishers and rights holders.
Making waves in this groundbreaking litigation, Ms. Brook’s team defeated OpenAI and Microsoft’s motions to dismiss various claims, negotiated first-of-their-kind protocols for inspecting petabyte-scale AI training data, and secured court orders requiring the production of everything from Sam Altman’s DMs to more than 100 million ChatGPT output logs. Ms. Brook has also led the push to compel deposition testimony from the Defendants’ most senior executives including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman, as well as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Kevin Scott.
Ms. Brook’s work in this area also includes representing: Encyclopedia Britannica & Merriam-Webster in copyright and trademark claims against Perplexity AI, alleging that the company’s “answer engine” copies the publishers’ content and diverts the traffic they depend on; Nielsen’s Gracenote in a copyright suit alleging that OpenAI copied not only its entertainment metadata but the relational framework that makes the data valuable; and Penske Media Corporation, publisher of Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline, in a novel antitrust action alleging that Google abuses its search monopoly to force publishers to surrender their content for AI Overviews as the price of appearing in search results (the first time a major U.S. publisher has taken Google to court over AI search).
DEFAMATION & MEDIA
Since 2020, Ms. Brook has served as co-lead counsel to Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation suits against the media outlets and individuals who falsely claimed Dominion’s machines rigged the 2020 presidential election – now the most consequential body of defamation litigation in modern U.S. history.
In 2023, just moments before a jury was set to hear opening arguments in Delaware Superior Court, Ms. Brook and her team secured a $787.5 million settlement from Fox News – the largest publicly known defamation settlement involving a media company in U.S. history. The result was covered as a defining moment for modern media law by The New York Times (“the latest extraordinary twist in a case … full of remarkable disclosures”), The Washington Post (“one of the most highly anticipated media trials in decades”), and The Wall Street Journal (“the case was set to test the contours of modern media law”), Ms. Brook was named a Law.com Litigator of the Week for the landmark result.
Ms. Brook and her team went on to secure a $67 million settlement from Newsmax after defeating Newsmax’s motion for summary judgment and obtaining rulings that more than two dozen of its broadcasts about Dominion were false. Ms. Brook and her team also secured confidential settlements with One America News Network, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Linell/MyPillow, resolving claims that had each sought more than $1 billion in damages. These resolutions were made possible by earlier wins along the litigation path, including defeating every motion to dismiss filed by the defendants including Fox News, Fox Corp, Newsmax, OANN, Powell, Giuliani, Lindell, MyPillow, and Patrick Byrne. Ms. Brook continues to lead the case against Patrick Byrne toward trial. The Dominion cases represent the rare instance in which civil litigation has imposed real, large-scale accountability for the deliberate spread of falsehoods.
Ms. Brook has handled other high-profile defamation matters for well-known clients, including securing a $203 million award for billionaire hedge-fund founder Louis Bacon. Ms. Brook owes her start in this area to having had the privilege of defending survivors who spoke out in the MeToo movement only to be met with expensive and silencing defamation lawsuits
CLASS ACTIONS & SURVIVOR ADVOCACY
In Doe v. MindGeek USA Inc., Ms. Brook is one of two lead partners representing a certified class of survivors against MindGeek (now Aylo) – parent of Pornhub and the largest online pornography company in the world – for hosting, distributing, and monetizing images of class members as minors in violation of federal sex-trafficking and child sexual abuse material laws. The case has produced two precedent-setting rulings: a 2021 order denying MindGeek’s motion to dismiss on Section 230 grounds (an extraordinary outcome under a statute that has long shielded internet platforms) and a 2023 order certifying an international class covering tens of thousands of victims, believed to be the first class certification of its kind against an internet platform.
OTHER COMMERCIAL & ENTERTAINMENT DISPUTES
Ms. Brook previously represented Sony Pictures in its breach-of-contract battle with CBS over the distribution of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, among the most valuable franchises in television. The court denied CBS’s bid for a preliminary injunction and found Sony likely to prevail. The pivotal ruling reshaped control of the shows’ distribution.
Ms. Brook also led an arbitration before three retired federal judges which resulted in a $59.6 million award for client, Ann Fandozzi, the former chief executive of RB Global (Ritchie Bros.), after the company failed to honor its compensation commitments to her – among the largest executive-compensation arbitration awards of its kind
PUBLIC SERVICE, PRO BONO & DEDICATION TO THE COMMUNITY
Ms. Brook is part of the Susman Godfrey team representing the American Bar Association in its lawsuit challenging the presidential administration’s policy of issuing executive orders targeting law firms for the clients they represent. Ms. Brook is likewise part of the Susman Godfrey team representing 35 retired federal judges who took objection with the Trump Administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund”—filing a brief that resulted in the Court overseeing that case to reopen it for further scrutiny.
Working pro bono, Ms. Brook successfully represented then-Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, among others, in litigation seeking to block the counting of lawfully cast votes in the 2020 election. In one such suit, Ms. Brook and her team successfully defended Governor Evers from a lawsuit brought by President Trump, securing dismissal following a bench trial.
In addition to her robust docket of cases, Ms. Brook actively participates in a range of legal and philanthropic organizations in Los Angeles and nationwide. Among them, she serves on the board of both the Federal Bar Association and The Willows Community School. During her time at Stanford Law School, Ms. Brook co-founded Building a Better Legal Profession, a national organization that promotes diversity within the legal profession by compiling and publishing data on law firms’ commitment to the retention and promotion of women and minority attorneys to full equity partner.
