Steven Brill (law writer)

Steven Brill (born August 22, 1950) is an American lawyer and journalist-entrepreneur. Brill's most recent reporting and book is concerned with healthcare costs.

Brill was born in Queens, New York. He is a graduate of Deerfield Academy, Yale College (B.A., 1972), and Yale Law School (J.D., 1975).

In October 1978, Brill published his first book The Teamsters. In 1979, Brill launched The American Lawyer, a monthly magazine covering the business of law firms and lawyers across the U.S. and around the world. Among its early contributors were Jill Abramson and Jim Cramer. The magazine is well known for its surveys including the Am Law 100, an annual ranking of the top 100 U.S. law firms which it launched in 1986. The magazine covered the meteoric rise and precipitous collapse of the law firm of Finley, Kumble, Wagner, Underberg, Manley, Myerson & Casey in its September 1987 cover story. "Bye, Bye, Finley, Kumble" was written by Brill.

In 1989, Brill founded Court TV (now TruTV) and the network launched on July 1, 1991. Among its original anchors were Fred Graham, who was still at the network twenty years later, Cynthia McFadden, and Terry Moran, who later joined ABC News. The network was born out of two competing projects to launch cable channels with live courtroom proceedings, the American Trial Network from Time Warner and American Lawyer Media and In Court from Cablevision and NBC. Both projects were combined and presented at the National Cable Television Association in June 1990. Liberty Media joined the venture in 1991. Court TV featured continuous live trial coverage, with analysis by anchors. The network came into its own during the Menendez brothers' first trial and later the O.J. Simpson murder trial. In 1997, Brill resigned from the network.

In June 1998, Brill launched Brill's Content, a media publication that ceased publication in fall 2001 (The Write News, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Aug. 1998)-v. 4, no. 6 (Fall 2001). The magazine caused a stir in its very first issue with Brill's article titled "Pressgate" charging that independent counsel Ken Starr and his office had been the source of much of the information for reporters regarding the grand jury proceedings about the Lewinsky scandal and that as a result Starr may have violated federal law or ethical and prosecutorial guidelines. The publication became less associated with Brill after its founding.

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