A lawyer who had never handled a conservatorship freed Britney Spears in four months
He treated his lack of probate experience as an advantage and acted like a prosecutor.
Original Jurisdiction · The Making Of A Celebrity Litigator: Mathew RosengartOn the morning of July 14, 2021, Mathew Rosengart, a litigator, walked into a Los Angeles courthouse he knew well to find a courtroom he had never seen. He had just been hired to represent Britney Spears, the pop star, in the court ordered arrangement that controlled her life, her decisions, and the millions of dollars she was earning performing in Las Vegas.
For 13 years, Spears had lived under that controlling and onerous conservatorship without the right to hire her own lawyer. Rosengart's first job was to convince the judge that she had that right like anyone else, and that he should be that lawyer.
It is the story of how an outsider won a famous case by treating his lack of experience as an advantage. Hired in July, Rosengart had Jamie Spears, the singer's father and conservator, suspended from his role by September, and by November the entire 13 to 14 year conservatorship was gone.
Rosengart had never handled a probate or conservatorship case. He said he knew the courthouse from frequent visits but had never needed that courtroom, and he worked with colleagues who were experts in the field. He called his inexperience an asset, because he came at a case full of thorny and complicated issues not as part of that small and insular group of specialists, but as an aggressive commercial litigator, acting, as he put it, like a federal prosecutor.
In the condensed days before the hearing, he said, "I was up until 2 in the morning many nights before the hearing," reading landmark rulings on the right to a lawyer. It was, he said, "an odd issue to have to" argue for a star who had been deprived of her own counsel for so long.
Other probate lawyers would have done the expected thing and moved immediately to end the whole conservatorship. Rosengart took criticism for refusing to do it. Instead he split the case in two. He compared the choice to chess, not checkers, and asked first only to remove Jamie Spears as conservator.
Judge Brenda Perry granted the suspension that September. Once the father was out, the rest moved in months. Two months later, the singer who had performed for tens of millions of dollars while unable to choose her own counsel was free of the arrangement.
Questions people ask
What exactly is a conservatorship?
A conservatorship, called a guardianship in many states, is a court order that gives one person legal control over another person's finances, health decisions, or daily life. Judges are supposed to use it as a last resort for people who cannot care for themselves, such as those with severe dementia, and to revisit whether it is still needed.
What was Gideon v. Wainwright about?
It is a 1963 Supreme Court decision that held that people accused of crimes who cannot afford a lawyer must be given one at public expense. Rosengart studied it because his opening argument was a simpler version of the same principle, that Spears should have the right to hire her own counsel after 13 years without it.
Why would removing one conservator be faster than ending the whole case?
A full termination forces a court to decide whether the conservatee can fully manage her own life and money, which often requires medical testimony, investigations, and more hearings. Removing a single conservator focuses the fight on that person's conduct and fitness, so a judge can act quickly while the larger case continues.