About Us

Sophisticated Counsel. Practical Solutions. Real Results.

A boutique transactional firm bringing big-firm experience and operator-level judgment to complex real estate, finance, and entertainment matters. With offices in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, Ellis Law Partners advises clients across California and beyond on the deals that move their businesses forward.

Ellis Law Partners, LLP is a transactional and commercial law firm representing clients in entertainment, real estate, private credit, fund formation, technology, and general business matters. From offices in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, our attorneys advise institutional lenders, private investment funds, real estate developers, family offices, senior housing operators, film and television producers, talent and content companies, and high net worth individuals.

Our partners practiced at leading national law firms — Munger, Tolles & Olson; Paul, Hastings; Pircher, Nichols & Meeks; and Glaser Weil — and have spent significant portions of their careers in-house, serving as general counsel, executive officers, and operators of the kinds of businesses we now represent. That dual perspective shapes how we work: we understand not only how to draft and negotiate the document, but how the deal needs to function once the ink is dry.

We are pragmatic, efficient, and creative. We focus on getting deals done — quickly when the situation demands it, and carefully when it doesn’t — at a price point that reflects the realities of today’s market.

Our Approach

What sets ELP apart is judgment earned the hard way — by sitting on the client side of the table for many of the same kinds of transactions we now document for others.

  • Operator’s perspective. Our partners have served as general counsel, executive officers, and managing directors for businesses in real estate, private lending, talent management, film and television production, professional sports, and technology investing. We know what makes a deal work in practice, not just on paper.
  • Senior attention. Clients work directly with partners. There are no layers of associates billing into a matter, and no hand-offs at critical moments.
  • Efficient and pragmatic. We focus on the issues that actually matter to closing the deal and protecting the client. We do not run up files on points that don’t move the needle.
  • Creative problem-solving. Many of our most rewarding engagements have involved structures that did not exist when the matter began — sidecar vehicles, novel waterfall mechanics, hybrid debt-equity instruments, and creative workout structures.
  • Big-firm credentials, boutique economics. Our partners trained at top national firms and have led billion-dollar transactions. We bring that capability to a boutique platform with rates that reflect today’s market.