Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news. I'm Noah Feldman. This season we're exploring power, power in the legal system, power in the media, the power of personality, you name it. This is not very usual kind of episode.
It's still about power, but in an unusual way. This past February, the New York Times released a documentary called Framing Britney Spears, a film about Britney's rise to stardom and the conservatorship, a legal form of guardianship she's been in since two thousand and eight. The film brought renewed scrutiny to Britney's conservatorship and also to conservatorship more broadly. In a remarkable twist, some House Republicans are now calling
for national conservatorship reform. Here to help us understand conservatorship law and what happened to Britney Spears is Adam Streisand he's a trial attorney and really in truth, an attorney to the stars. He's always involved in high profile litigation and private wealth disputes of large magnitude. If you saw the documentary, you will know who he is. In the run up to the conservatorship application, Britney Spears met with Adam and she hired Adam. That means, in legal terms,
he was her lawyer. He then went into court where the judge determined that Britney Spears was unable in legal terms, to hire her own attorney and to pick her own attorney, and therefore gave her a court appointed attorney who represents her to this day. Adam is going to walk us through conservatorship. He's going to discuss whether reform is needed and if so, how, and he's also going to talk about his experiences with Britney's case and what it means
at the bigger level. Adam hasn't given any interviews to any other media source that I know of since appearing in the documentary, so we're particularly lucky that he agreed to appear here on deep background to take us behind the story of Britney spears conservatorship. Adam, I'm so grateful
to you for being here on deep background. I'll tell you the backstory from my perspective, which is that since the documentary about Britney's conservatorship, I can't even count how many people professional and unprofessional have said to me, you know, Noah, you know, to tell us what we should think about conservatorship. And I said to them, look, I'm not an expert on conservatorship. I barely remember what I learned about it in law school. I don't even play an expert on
deep Let's talk to a real expert. And I sort of realized at some point that the public interest in this is so fundamental and the issues behind it are so significant that it's really worth having a conversation with someone who genuinely is an expert and who has first
hand knowledge of the situation. So that's the backstory of how you're here, And so I wonder if we could start by just walking the folks through, and that includes me the one on one of conservatorship, what it's for, how it's established, and when it's well functioning, whether it's a good idea. Right. So, the most important thing to know about conservatorships is that it's a process that's designed
to protect people who are vulnerable. And they may be vulnerable because of mental illness, dementia, other conditions which cause them to be either unable to manage their own lives, their own daily activities of living, getting appropriate healthcare, feeding themselves, taining shelter, and also making finance hual decisions, and very importantly resisting the influence of people who might want to
take advantage of them. And let's be clear, there is a lot of that going on, especially as our population continues to age. Healthcare is better and better, people are living longer lives. But it's sort of the Ronald Reagan syndrome. They're healthy physically, but not necessarily mentally. They become more and more vulnerable and susceptible to influence of others or simply unable to really manage their own lives, you know,
make sure they're paying taxes on time. Yeah, seen from that perspective, it sounds like we need conservatorship in our system because there are people who are aging or people who have other underlying disease and they really do need to be taken care of. So what are the safeguards that are in place presently, and then we can talk about whether they're good enough so that not just anyone is placed in a conservatorship. Sure, so, conservatives ship are
actually really really tough to obtain. You have to be able to approve to a court at a trial by clear and convincing evidence right, So that means not just your normal civil standard of more probable than not, and not your criminal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, but somewhere in between, a clear and convincing evidence standard that the person needs a conservatorship because they're unable to manage
their own affairs or resist undue influence by others. And you also have to show that a conservatorship is what we call the least restrictive means available in order to protect them, because there are other ways in which people can be protected. For example, if your assets are held in trust and you have a trustee, the trustee has the power to make financial decisions, you can influence me all you want. But I don't have that power anymore.
My assets are in trust, or I have a healthcare directive a power of attorney for healthcare decisions, or I'm getting you know, I have care and place to help me with my daily living, so I don't necessarily need the framework of a conservatorship. But unfortunately a lot of people don't have those things, and conservativeships are really the best means available to protect them. What's unusual, of course, about the Britney case it's not unique. But it's unusual
is that she's young. Okay, she has been in a conservatorship for thirteen years, and she seems to be functioning, right. I mean, we see her onstage performing, we see her on television co hosting a TV show, and we say to ourselves, will wait a minute. If this is a conservatorship as supposed to be a system to protect people who can't function on their own, and only when they really can't function in their own, how is it appropriate for her because she seems to be able to function.
The problem is we just don't really know what's going on behind the scenes, and that's the real problem at this case. I have a whole barrage of questions about the trial of procedure, but before I get to them, I first want to I was really struck by what you said about that a trust would be considered an alternative,
and it does seem like a less restrictive alternative. So why isn't it the case that for just about anybody who would be in a position where conservatorship would be applied for that, a court would say, actually, no, let's just create a trust, put your assets in the trust, and appoint a trustee. Brittany's assets are in trust and there is a trustee, and so you might ask, Will
then why does Brittany have a conservative of the estate. Well, it can be useful to have a conservative the estate who can be the one to make sure the trust he's doing his job, and a conservatorship might be useful for that purpose. If the conservatie can't really do that and make sure, hey, the trustee is you know, dipping
or doing things inappropriate. That's actually fascinating because to watch the documentary when had the sense that the conservatorship has some fundamentally transformational effect on her how her affairs are run.
But if actually her wealth is in trust and the trustee is not the person who's the conservator, which I guess is the father, it may be that it doesn't make such a big difference that she's in conservatorship, which would in turn, to some degree, undercut the perhaps the newsworthiness of the whole formulation, which is, oh my goodness, this is so shocking. I mean, if the story were stars assets in trust, no one would find that shocking
because many, many people's assets are in trust. Yes, And I want to say two things to that, First of all, when you're talking about a celebrity, a celebrity oftentimes engages in what we call personal service contracts right when they actually agree to perform. That's a personal service contract that the trustee of your assets can't make. So there is a need for her to have somebody who can make a decision for things like you know, performing a concerts,
no doubt. So just to clarify, I think, I think
I understand. The striking thing then about the conservator is that Britney Spears can't even sign a contract to appear and sing or do whatever it else she'd been doing in her appearance without the conservator signing essentially on her behalf exactly, Whereas if it were a trust, that's just in a trust, you take the asset that you have, whether it's money or real estate, you put it into the trust, and that asset gets managed, But the trustee doesn't manage your day to day affairs, and so that
does make it actually pretty distinctive. Well, that sounds like it's more of a justification for the documentary than there otherwise might have been. Yeah, certainly in the context of an entertainer. But it's really important though to understand that conservatorships are actually fairly limited in terms of what they can really do. To text somebody, yes, they can make sure that if there's a contract that needs to be signed,
a conservator has to sign that contract. You can't walk up to somebody who's incapacitated and have them sign away their you know, their house that you don't have the power to do that. The problem a lot of times with conservatorships, though, is they are limited in terms of how much you can really help a person. And let
me explain to what I mean by that. One of the most heartbreaking things that I have in my practice is I get parents who call me all the time and they have kids who are adults, but they have terrible drug problems, they have terrible eating disorders. They really are, you know, having problems living on the street, and they really need help. And what I have to tell them
is a conservatorship is probably not going to help. And the reason is that you can't really force somebody who's in a conservatorship to be compliant with things like medications or going into a treatment program. You can't sign somebody into a lockdown facility, you can't force them to take medications, so if they're really not compliant, if they're not willing
to cooperate, conservatorships are pretty limited. There's a whole separate type of conservatorship that's called an LPs conservatorship in California, which are the initials for the legislators who designed it, and that's a conservatorship where you can actually lock somebody up, you can put them in a mental institution, you can
force medications and so forth. They're extremely rare that you have to prove by essentially a quasi criminal standard, that they're gravely disabled and there are a threat to either themselves or others. And no one accept a mental health facility a hospital, but all a psychiatric award can actually seek that type of conservatorship. So a family member can't, a friend can't. It's got to be the hospital that
says we need this protection for that person. So conservatorships the kind that Britney is in are actually pretty limited. That other kind you're describing, the LPs kind of sounds like it's a version of civil committal. It really is, yeah, where you have to prove to the court, you know, by a very very high standard, that the prisoners are threat to themselves. Or others, and then they can be
involuntarily restrained in a range of ways. That's right. Yeah, And so you know there's a lot of stuff out there about you know, Britney can't, can't leave the house, she can't take a walk, she can't. None of that's true. None of that is None of that is true. It's great that people are now interested in what is a
conservatorship and doesn't really work, and that is important. But unfortunately, and I know this is going to be shocking to you, but there are legislators who like to grahamstand and in our country, yeah, and want to you know, show that they're you know, being responsive to to some public outcry. And you know, my fear is that all the attention that this is getting will lead to some laws that will undermine the system and leave people who really need
protection without the protection that they that they really do need. So, Laura, form that makes it much harder to get conservatorships will therefore leave fewer people with conservatorships. That it will also probably raise the cost people probably have to pay attorney's fees to get this done, and it will cost them more.
Presumably what about the who guards the guardians problem? Once you are the conservator, is there any function or role for anybody to look over the shoulder of the conservator and check on the quality of the work that person is doing. Yeah, so that's a that's a really great question. So look, first of all, let me say I don't think the problem with conservatorships or necessarily this conservatorship is
a problem of the law. I think the law in terms of the framework that it establishes is appropriate, and it balances the difficult nature of trying to obtain a conservatorship and maintain a conservatorship even after you get it, and protecting the rights of the proposed conservaty. But you know, we have a judicial system that has elasticity because we need to make sure that in each appropriate case it
makes sense based on the facts of that case. And we also have a system that depends on people, and that means we have lawyers, we have judges and other professionals, doctors, court investigators, all of whom we're human. And it is possible that you will find somebody who is corrupt, who
is unethical, or judge who frankly isn't that smart. It makes a bad decision, believe it or not, that happens shocking, But so far I've yet to see a judicial system that's better than ours in terms of the advocacy that it's based on. An advocacy that is, everybody's interests being argued to the court, and the court making a decision is the best way to find the best version of the truth. As Woodward and burst In say, let me
ask you about the advocacy structures and how they worked here. So, if there's an application for a conservatorship, does that automatically mean that sort of counsel is appointed if the person for whom it sought just acquiescence. I mean, Brittany didn't contest this conservatorship, did she? She didn't. So let me just back up a little bit and tell you we have somebody who can petition the court for a conservatorship.
That can be a family member, that can be a friend, who can ask the court to establish a conservatorship, and they're the one who have to prove that a conservatorship is necessary. Other friends, family members can object, can show up with lawyers and evidence and argue why a conservatorship is not appropriate, And of course the proposed conservaty can do that also, and a judge will have to make a decision at a trial, and in California, the conservaty can ask for a jury trial as well. Now, who
represents the proposed conservaty? And I want to make a distinction between when the person is a proposed conservaty and when the person is under a conservatorship. So when the person is a proposed conservaty under California law and law in most states, they have the right to have counsel of their own choice unless they if they're unable to
retain counsel, then the court will appoint counsel for them. Okay, somebody who is experienced in the area, and the court knows and can appoint the first So that's a narrow band because they have to be incompetent enough to merit conservatorship, but not so incompetent that they couldn't hire counsels. That's right. And it's not entirely clear what it means to say that they are unable to retain counsel, because until there's
a conservatorship, there hasn't been an adjudication that they are incompetent. Okay, So here's a perfect example. Adam Streisan is hired by Brittany right, her family law attorneys contact me, asked me to get involved because they know me and they know my reputation. And then I do this kind of thing. I meet with Brittany a couple of times. We have lots of communication and otherwise by telephone. We talk about what the circumstances are. Now I can tell you what
I told the court because that's publicly. Shout right, it's public. And so I told the court with Brittany and I agreed I would tell the court. What I did tell the court is, Look, she understands that this conservatorship is an inevitability. I mean, right now, things are out of control, and she gets that resisting the conservatorship is going to be very difficult but the one thing that she wants and difficult legally. Just forgive me for asking the clarifying question.
But of course what's is fascinating but difficult. How difficult that she couldn't have won? I mean she has Adam streisand representing her. If you had sought to oppose it, you would have successfully opposed it. Well, I mean, I appreciate your confidence in me, and I also have a high level of confidence in my own abilities, But the fact of the matter must know that there was clearly there was medical evidence that she has some fairly serious
mental illness. I don't know exactly what that is. We'll talk about that a little bit is more, but we also know because it was very public the kinds of things that were going on with her, and she was, you know, she was out of control. Now, frankly, ask yourself how you would feel with all of the hundreds of paparazzi all over you, which I got to witness firsthand, and was insane. I don't know how that doesn't make you feel crazy. I mean, but it's not. That's different
than underlying mental illness. That's true. Yeah, Well, if you have underlying mental illness and you are hounded by hundreds of paparazzi and your husband is not allowing you to see your kids, that would make anybody pretty out of control. And again I'm saying out of control. I don't mean to say she's crazy or anything. Of course, things were out of control, and it was very public, and it was clear that the court, at least on an interim basis,
was going to put in some protection for her. It was my judgment that what we ought to do is we ought to try to get the one thing that really really mattered to her, which is, I don't want my father controlling my life, okay, which is something we
ought to talk about. And if we could do that, if we could get an appropriate person, an independent professional, to be that conservator for some interim basis, and then work to try to figure out, all, right, how do we get a little bit more control over our life, and you know, and move on. And again, Also, I didn't know the extent of her of her mental illness
when I walked into court. The judge said to me, mister Streisan, I have a medical report I'm not going to show it to you from doctor James Edward Sparr. Now I know doctor Sparr. I've known him for years. I know the guy is a man of integrity. I know that he is the best of what he does in terms of valuating mental illness. And the judge tells me that doctor spar has concluded that she suffers from mental illness to the point where she cannot retain a
direct counsel. Now, my perspective was she made some pretty sound judgments, right. She was able to take my advice. Hey, let's not try to resist. This will look reasonable. We'll get the thing you really really want right now, which is not your father, and then we'll work on the next step of doing away with the conservatorship framework. I
thought that was pretty sad. But I'm not a doctor, right, And if doctor Sparr says she's really that bad, I said to the court, if doctor Sparr has concluded that, I accept that. I mean, I respect doctor Sparr. And if the court feels that she would be better served with another lawyer, that's fine. We'll be right back. Can I ask a a sort of loggy question here? Sure was she your client at this point or were someone else your client? She was my client. She signed an
engagement agreement with me. She you know, we met, we discussed the term. So when the court said that she lacked the capacity to retain counsel, what did that This is the loggy question. What did that do to your existing representational relationship with her? I mean, you had she had signed an agreement with you, and there's the court telling you her lawyer that she lacks the capacity to retainue. So I mean, what happens? Well, you know, could I
have fought it. I probably could have fought it. I did have again, respect for the conclusions that doctor Sparr reached. If she had been adjudicated as being incompetent, that would have seriously put into question whether or not she could have maintained an attorney client relationship with me. Once she's a conservative, Once there's an adjudication she lacks capa ascity to contract, then there's a question about whether she should be able to have a person represent her that she
wants to represent her. And the law doesn't say you can't. The law doesn't say. The court couldn't have said, sure, you know, mister Stisan, we're going to allow you to be the lawyer. But the court has more latitude at that point to say no, we're going to appoint somebody. And it's important to remember something. First of all, Judge Gets was Commissioner Gets at the time. She was new to the bench, she was brand new to probate. She
didn't know me. Frankly, if the decision were made today she knows me now, I'm sure the decision would have been different. But she didn't know me. And I'm walking into the courtroom saying I represent Britney spears. Now, I could be part of the gang who's under the influencinger and trying to take advantage of her. I could be somebody who is being really being retained or pushed on Britney by somebody who is manipulating her. And so I think there is an important role for the court to
play in saying, you know what. It is important for the Conservaty to have the right to say, this is somebody I want to represent me. But it's also important for the court to have the ability to say, you know what, I've got enough evidence here that makes me think, you know, it'd be better to appoint somebody to represent the Conservaty. That's what happened at that moment, right. The Court then appointed different counsel for her, and then that
council made a decision not to contest the conservatorship. Is that right? Not only that, but that council Sammingham made a decision for the past twelve years not to contest the appointment of her father as the Conservative, which I found very curious. Now, is it I don't know what
happens in closed room between her and her council. Is it possible that a different decision was made and that made a rational decision at that point, or or is it possible that the quarter pointing council was not advocating the one thing that was really really important to her. And that's a problem that I have. I mean, that's
potentially a serious problem. And it also raises a puzzle that I myself don't understand, and you may have some insight into, which is, if she wanted to contest the conservatorship, you know, into totality, or just seek a conservator who was not her father, she would need to convince her counsel to do that. Right. Well, it's interesting that you say she should need to convince her counsel. Right, that's
an interesting word choice. You don't convince your lawyer to do something unless usually you just asked them to do it. You asked them, and the lawyer has an ethical obligation, as you know, to be a zealous advocate, even if the lawyer thinks that it's not in the client's best interest, right. I mean, I always am brutally honest with clients, But at the end of the day, the client makes the decision. Unless it's something they're asking me to do. That's unethical
on my own part. My job is to advocate for them. So the ethical duty of her attorney is if she were to say to him, listen, I want to challenge this conservatorship, he would have a duty to return to court and start a filing and a hearing to change the conservators ship. Presumably so, assuming that he's behaving ethically, which we don't have any objective reason to think he isn't. It seems like the answer that puzzle is that that's not what Britney Spirits has done. That she hasn't challenged
the conservatorship. And if that's so, then that's a puzzle that's in some ways at odds with the kind of the public thrust of the Free Britney movement. Not that I understand or claim to understand the movement in any detail, but to the extent that it seems to be composed of the idea that she's being involuntarily blocked from a
change in circumstances. She does have an attorney who, under the norms of ethics, the cannons of ethics, would have to go to court and challenge the conservatorship if she wanted to, and he hasn't, and from that, it seems that we could infer that most likely she has not asked him to do so, is that chain of logic sound?
That is a sound chain of logic. The problem is there is some countervailing evidence that gives me a little bit of trouble, and that is, as I told you, the one most important thing to her when I first met with her in two thousand and eight was I don't want my father to be the conservator. Now, once Samingham was appointed, we never heard that again until all of a sudden twelve years later, Sammingham files in petition saying I don't want my father to be the conservator.
So then I asked myself, well, why did it take twelve years for him to advocate the one thing that was so important to her when I met with her in two thousand a day? And if he wasn't advocated, and again there may have been some reason why there was a change of course, but if he wasn't advocating that, then maybe he wasn't advocating other things that she wanted
to be advocated. And herein lies one of the problems that I do think exists when you have to rely on a system of people who are involved and have various interests, some of which may conflict with the interests of the Conservative. Sam Ingham is appointed by the Court to be Britney's lawyer. Now sam Ingham gets paid by making petitions to the Court for approval of his fees to be paid from the conservatorship a state that's controlled
by the Conservator. Now, if somebody doesn't like what sam Ingham is doing, they're more likely to object to his petitions for fees, and there are more likely to be questions raised about those fees. If, on the other hand, you are peering in court and consistently saying, yes, your honor, I think the Conservatory is doing a great job. I support what the Conservator wants to do. How closely do you think the Conservator is going to examine the bills,
especially because the Conservators not paying those bills. The Conservative is paying those bills. And so if there is a weakness in the system, that is one potential weakness. And the problem is we do have to depend on people, especially lawyers, to be ethical lawyers, and I tend to believe that generally they are. There are exceptions, however, sadly, but changing the law will have my view unintended consequences
that will really hurt people who need protection. Are the fee applications by the lawyer representing Brittany at the court assigned lawyer public? Does it a matter of public record how much he's paid and how frequently he's asked for it? And is it also a matter of public record whether those applications have been opposed or objected to by your father? So generally these things would be a matter of public record. The court does have some latitude to seal those records,
and I think that's what's happened in Brittany's case. Query whether that's really appropriate or not, because the public does have a right to know, I mean in our system, in the American system. I know my British colleague is always wins at this. But one of the things that is important in carrying out this issue of balancing the public's right to know versus a person's right to privacy is it it has to be applied in a way
that doesn't favor the rich. I represent a lot of high net worth individuals right What I have to say to them all the time is just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean that you have a right to greater protection of your privacy than people who don't have a lot of money. There has to be some other reason, right, There has to be like the Patty Hurst reason. I mean, I was involved in the
Hearst matter. If there's a threat that somebody could be kidnapped, we don't want that kind of financial information out in the open, Okay, So there is an important reason for balancing those interests. But in this case, so far, I believe those records have been sealed. If a person under conservatorship with a court appointed attorney wanted to hire a different attorney and reached out, of course she wouldn't be legally able to sign a contract with another attorney, but
she could make a phone call. And then would it be permissible for the other attorney to then go to court and challenge the representational efficacy of the court appointed attorney. So, in other words, if in theory purely hypothetical, Brittany or someone in her position were to contact you and say, listen, I'm not happy with my lawyer, what options would you have?
Would you be able to go to court and says the person wants me to represent them, Yes, that is an option, but also keep in mind, and I've seen this happen that if a Conservative says to her lawyer, I don't want you to represent me, that lawyer then has an ethical obligation to say to the court, your honor, I should be relieved as counsel because I can't maintain
a relationship of trust and confidence. The Conservative does not want me to be that lawyer, and the Court's going to have to make a decision about whether that's something that is appropriate to change the lawyer. Given the concerns that you have that you've expressed about whether, in fact this lawyer may have been fully representing Britney's best interests, do you ever have regret about not about that moment when you didn't contest the court's decision to remove and
replace you. I mean, I don't think you were under any ethical obligation to do otherwise. The court had made the decision and so that's on the court. And she was also going to be represented by independent counsel. So you know, ethically, I'm under the cannons of ethics. You're clearly fine, but you have human regret about that moment.
You know. It's funny. First of all, I have to tell you that I've represented a lot of famous people and been involved in a lot of you know, sort of celebrity cases and so forth, and for me in my career, this was, you know, kind of a blitp. So it's not like, well, you know, this is Britney Spears and you know, the representation of my lifetime. But
I do. I accepted that people were acting honorably and ethically as I thought I was when I agreed to step aside and say, okay, if the court believes, based on the evidence the Court has, that it's really more appropriate for an independent council and that would make the court more comfortable and maybe even more effective, right because if the court has a point, it's somebody the court at least should have confidence that that is a person that the Court can trust and rely on, not necessarily
somebody who's just walking in off the street and saying I represent Britney Spears. So I really did believe that that might actually be helpful to Brittany at that moment.
I have to say that as time has gone by, the one thing I keep saying to people is we just don't know what we don't know, right, So, for example, these Republican Congressmen who have now demanded hearings, have said the conservatorships are used to take advantage of people and manipulate the courts, and that the Britney case is the prime examples, says who based on what evidence, we don't really know what the mental illness is that she may have.
We don't really know what's going on behind closed doors. And as you pointed out, in thirteen years, assuming that her lawyer is acting ethically, she could have at any time in those thirteen years, she could have every single day for thirteen years, petition the court determinate the conservatorship and be prepared to come forward with evidence showing that she doesn't need a conservatorship and she's never done that.
Or she could have just gone on Facebook or Instagram and said I'm unhappy with my attorney or i don't like this conservatorship. It wouldn't require any great you know, let me give you the give you the retort by the Free Britney movement to that, though, they'll say, and they have a point which is yes, but they're using her children as pawns. They're threatening her that you know you won't have visitation rights, will take your kids away
if you complain. Okay, Now, again, nobody really knows what's actually being said, and that would be fundamentally unethical of her attorney. It would be fundamentally unethical of her attorney.
And but I will say this, Imagine a scenario where you have, say, a sister who is severely mentally handicapped, or she's she's got a terrible drug problem or drinking problem, and she's just danger to her kids, and you say, look, unless you go into treatment, I'm going to go to the family law court and say you shouldn't have custodial rights over your children. Okay, So you can't just look at everything in a vacuum and say, oh, but they're using her kids as a pond. Well, first of all,
we don't know. But even even if there is some suggestion, bear in mind the other side, which is it may not be inappropriate. You know, it's always struck me that Britney Spears's public story from as long as you know, I've been aware of her in the media, which is, you know, pretty much as long as she's been in the media, which is a long time now, has always functioned as a kind of stand in or you know, morality to al for whatever preoccupations we have at a
given moment. You know, are we worried about the emerging sexuality of young women, Well, let's turn that into the Britney story. You know, are we worried about mental health issues around childbirth? Let's turn that into the Britney story.
I'm interested in what it means this time because my takeaway from your very, very cogent analysis is that we don't really know whether this is a tragedy, which it would be if she were in the grips of unethical actors who were threatening her and making it difficult for her to object to representation, or whether it's an instance of the system more or less working the way it should be, in that there is a conservator, she has representation, her money is in a trust, and she's actually getting
what she needs and doesn't seem to be objecting to it. So we have just profound uncertainty around this, exactly right. So if that's the case, I guess my question is this is really a psychological question rather than a legal one.
But what is that our preoccupation that the Free Britney movement is focused on now, and is it maybe the idea that women in general, and young women in particular are really vulnerable to judgments made by men who say, you know, you're not responsible enough to take care of yourself. We're taking away your agency. Is this maybe a metaphor for agency in some broader sense? I think that's absolutely right.
The thing that was wrenching for me and watching the documentary is really seeing the frankly, the misogyny and the sexism. And I mean from the moment she's a little girl on stage and Ed McMahon is sexualizing her. So then it does lead into questions about is she being treated
differently in this conservativeship process because she's a woman? Is she more vulnerable to a system that is paternalistic right in all senses of the term, in all sense of the terms right, putting her father in control of her life, that you know, sort of one person we don't want. By the way, I do want to mention about that. You know, the conservator could have been thousands of different people, right, It could have been anybody. It didn't have to be
her father. And if the one thing that this system is designed to do is to help vulnerable people, why on the world would you make give the control and the power to the person that makes her feel less in controller makes her feel more vulnerable. So well, I want to thank you for just an extraordinarily clear and direct explanation of everything, and also for your candor about your own experiences and your overall analysis. If you ever get bored of being a celebrity lawyer, you can always
be a law professor on the side. So thank you for the explanations. Well, thank you. I want you to know I've had requests, you know, frankly, all over the world to be interviewed, do podcast, documentaries, TV whatever. I've ignored all of it. Yours is the one request that I answered. I really admire you. I'm trying also to forgive you for our latest Supreme Court justice, but I really do. I appreciate you, I admire you. I hope you are right about our Supreme Court justice. But it's
been a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much, and I really am deeply grateful that you agreed, notwithstanding my views of Supreme Court, to join us. So thank you very much. You're very welcome. That fascinating conversation with Adam streisand tells you a lot about the complexities of conservatorship and indeed about power. In fact, just listening to that conversation, you hear what an excellent, brilliant lawyer who is hired by those with unlimited resources sounds like,
and how he thinks about and analyzes legal issues. That alone is always a matter of real value. What really surprised me most about the conversation were the details of the process, which was not really detailed in the documentary of how Adam was hired by Britney Spears. How he went into court and was then effectively told by the judge, you can't represent her because she's not capable of hiring you.
That put Adam in an extremely difficult position of trying to decide whether he should fight the judge's determination or alternatively acquiesce in a judgment that was dependent on the opinion of a doctor, and as Adam explained, he ended up making the judgment that there might be reasons for the court to remove him and replace him with a court appointed attorney, because after all, how would the court
know that he was legitimate and ethical himself. That's a classic example and a really surprising one of the kind of difficult decision that lawyers sometimes have to make in real time. Someone has hired you, which means that she wants you to represent her, then a chord is telling you she lacked the capacity to do so. That is not a simple decision to make, and it both fascinated and surprised me to hear that Adam was put in
that situation. Under the conservatorship system as it exists, Brittany does, at least in principle, have mechanisms she could use to draw attention to any dislike or dissatisfaction that she has with her lawyer or with the conservatorship. But we don't know, as Adam emphasized, whether there are potential distortions in the system that nevertheless exist in which Brittany is somehow being threatened so that she's unable to raise those concerns or
feels she's unable to raise those concerns. The whole issue is therefore, at least as complicated, and I think actually much more complicated than it appeared to be in the documentary, and it demonstrates that power is complexly deployed our legal system. You could be very rich and very famous and still find yourself represented by a court appointed attorney, and perhaps without the power to change the basic circumstances in which you are operating legally speaking. At the same time, there
are also protections available in this system. As Adam pointed out, Brittany can leave her house, the conservator cannot, in practical terms, block her from doing most of the things that she might choose to do. And what's more, her assets are in trust, and the trustee of that trust is not the conservator. The takeaway power is deployed in very complicated
ways in the legal system. The legal system designs itself and tries to operate in such a way as to use mutual checks so that lawyers check lawyers and we reduce the probabilities of fundamental distortion. But as Adam said, that process still depends to a great extent on the
assumption that lawyers will behave ethically. I would love to believe, as a law professor and a person who cares about the legal system, that all lawyers are ethical, but as probably every single person listening knows, that's just not always the case. There is no magic bullet solution to the potential for unethical lawyering, and it remains a challenge to figure out how legal power can be deployed as ethically as is possible. Until the next time I speak to you,
be careful, be safe, and be well. Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Mo laboord, our engineer is Martin Gonzalez, and our shorerunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband. Theme music by Luis Guerra at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton, Lydia Jean Cott, Heather Fain, Carl mcniori, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on Twitter at
Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot com slash Podcasts, and if you liked what you heard today, please write a review or tell a friend. This is Deep Background.