kanye

The long ordeal for Kanye West’s former lawyers is finally over — and they didn’t need to run those newspaper ads after all.
A month after attorneys from the law firm Greenberg Traurig asked a judge to let them to run notices in Los Angeles newspapers announcing they had dropped Ye as a client because they had “exhausted all methods” of contacting him, they told a federal judge Friday (Feb. 3) that they had finally gotten a hold of him.

“The address at which Ye was personally served is not one that is publicly affiliated with Ye or his businesses, but one that Ye nonetheless frequents,” the lawyers wrote in a court filing. “The location also appears to be primarily used by persons and entities not affiliated with Ye or his businesses.”

According to court papers, the notification process was finally accomplished after the firm was contacted by an unnamed attorney who said he would be representing Ye “on some of his legal matters.” A signed document shows that West was formally served on Jan. 27.

Greenberg, one of many law firms to cut ties with Ye in the wake of his antisemitic statements last year, had been trying for months to legally notify the rapper that its lawyers will no longer be representing him. The firm had previously repped West in a copyright lawsuit filed over one of the tracks off his album Donda 2.

Judge Analisa Torres already approved the firm’s withdrawal last year, but federal litigation rules and legal ethics require lawyers to personally serve clients with formal notice that they’ve been dropped as a client. And last month, the Greenberg lawyers notified Judge Torres that West was making it impossible for them to do so. They said he had engaged in “deliberate avoidance and obstruction,” including ditching his previous representatives and changing his phone number.

Faced with that obstinance, the firm asked the judge to permit an extraordinary alternative: printing a formal public notice in Los Angeles newspapers.

“Given Ye’s public status, publication of the Withdrawal Order will likely garner significant media attention, resulting in broader publication and provide an even greater likelihood of apprising Ye of the Order,” the Greenberg lawyers wrote at the time.

Such steps will now not be necessary. In a declaration, Greenberg attorney Nina D. Boyajian detailed how the firm finally got the formal notification to their disgraced former client.

“On January 18, 2023, an attorney based in California contacted my firm advising that he would be representing ‘Ye on some of his legal matters,’” she wrote. “During the course of several emails and a phone call with this attorney, I requested that he coordinate personal service of the Order on Ye. On February 1, 2023, the attorney referenced above emailed me the executed Certificate of Service.”

The name of Kanye’s new attorney and the location where the star was finally located were not disclosed in public documents. Kanye could not immediately be located for comment.