Denise M. Stevens

Partner | Corporate
Co-Chair, Global Media,
Entertainment & Sports

About

Denise Stevens is currently a Partner at Pierson Ferdinand where her transactional practice focuses on creative properties across multiple platforms, including music, publishing, touring, television and film.

  • With a depth of experience reflective of her top-tier high-profile clients, including superstar recording artists and multi-hyphenate film and television personalities, Stevens is well-seasoned in all aspects of talent representation and a broad variety of entertainment matters, including the negotiation and renegotiation of exclusive major label recording and entertainment services agreements, establishing an artist’s independent operation for recording and other creative endeavors with venture partners, capitalizing on an artist’s brand value with major retailers and brands through various multi-platform sponsorship, endorsement agreements, philanthropy and other campaigns, creating artist-branded beverage, clothing and merchandise lines, literary agreements, film and television production and appearances, production of major concert tours and residencies, intellectual property protection, and numerous other performing, licensing, publishing, appearance, production and other agreements.

    She represents music publishers, film and TV producers and talent, financial institutions, and cutting edge entertainment tech companies. As general counsel to the Nashville Songwriters Association, she authored the bill that ultimately became the Songwriter’s Capital Gains Tax Equity Act, which has benefitted preeminent songwriters and countless other American songwriters in receiving fair tax treatment upon the ultimate sale of their works.


Practices

  • Communications & Media

  • Global Media, Entertainment & Sports

  • Copyrights

  • Trademarks

Admissions

  • Tennessee

  • California

  • U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee

  • Tennessee State Supreme Court

  • U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

  • U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California

  • U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California

  • California State Supreme Court


Education

  • University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, J.D., Dean's Scholar, Senior Note Editor, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly

  • American Jurisprudence Award in Trial Advocacy

  • University of California at Los Angeles, B.A., cum laude


Recognition

  • Named to Billboard's "Top Music Lawyers" list (2024)

  • Named to Billboard's "Country Power Players" list (2021 and 2022)

  • Appointed by Tennessee State Governor, Bill Haslam as “Colonel, Aide de Camp,” the highest honorary commission granted to a citizen of the state of Tennessee (2018)

  • Awarded "Women in Music City Award" by the Nashville Business Journal (2017-2018)

  • Named in Chambers USA, America's Leading Lawyers for Business, in Tennessee Media & Entertainment (2015-2024)

  • Named in The Legal 500 US in Media & Entertainment, published by Legalease Limited and John Pritchard (2022 and 2023)

  • Named in Variety's "Music City Impact Report" (2014)

  • Named "Mid-South Super Lawyer" in Entertainment and Sports by Thomson Reuters (2014, 2016-2023)

  • Honored by MusicRow as a "Rising Woman on the Row" for her substantial contributions to the Nashville music industry (2012)

  • Named "Best Lawyer" in Entertainment Law, The Best Lawyers in America (2010-2025), and recognized among "Women of Influence" by Best Lawyers (2015-2017), published by Woodward White, Inc. 

  • Recipient, Nashville Songwriters Association's President's Choice Award (2007)

  • Extern, Honorable Charles Legge, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (1992)


Affiliations

  • Board of Directors, Crescendo Foundation

  • Co-Chair 2010 Program and 2009 Alumna, Leadership Music

  • General Counsel, Nashville Songwriters Association International

  • Member, Past Board of Directors and Past Chairman & Treasurer, Copyright Society of the South

  • Member, Academy of Country Music

  • Member, Country Music Association

  • Member, Gospel Music Association

  • Member, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences

  • Member, Association of Independent Music Publishers

  • Member, SOURCE

  • Member, Tennessee State Bar Association

  • Member, Nashville Bar Association

  • Major, Civil Air Patrol (United States Air Force Auxiliary) 

  • Past Board of Directors, T.J. Martell Foundation

  • Past Board of Directors, FilmNashville

  • Past Board of Directors and Secretary, Gospel Music Association Foundation

Experience

  • Loeb & Loeb LLP