Kevin Yorn


Kevin Yorn is an American entertainment attorney who co-founded Morris Yorn Barnes Levine Entertainment Law Firm where he is managing partner.

Early life

Yorn is an alumnus of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. He graduated with a Juris Doctor degree from Tulane University Law School. Yorn was admitted to The State Bar of California in 1991. Yorn has collaborated with Tulane University, his alma mater and created funds to promote entertainment and media law at Tulane Law School as well as to support the Gender & Sexuality Studies program in the School of Liberal Arts.

Career

Yorn became a deputy district attorney in L.A. County after graduating from Tulane Law in 1990. He was in the D.A.’s office for five years, working in the Hardcore Gang Investigations Unit. In 2018, Yorn was named one of Hollywood's top power lawyers by Hollywood Reporter.
After the D.A's office, Yorn partnered with Kevin Morris, a lawyer he met through his brother, Rick Yorn. An aspiring writer named Anthony Zuiker asked Yorn for help in escaping a screenwriting contract. Zuiker had an idea to do a show about forensics, which later became CSI, one of the most popular franchises in TV history.
In the summer of 2014, Yorn's firm made a deal with Hulu for three years of South Park reruns, reportedly at a price of more than $80 million, and he helped Zuiker make content deals with YouTube and Yahoo. Yorn also created a joint venture with Warner Bros., Ellen DigitalVentures, to help exploit Ellen DeGeneres’ social media reach as well as her digital video content, games and apps, including "Heads Up!." In 2013, Yorn worked on the deal to renew DeGeneres' talk show through 2016-17.
Yorn will co-produce "Phenomenon," Roseanne Montillo's biography of Betty Robinson, the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in track and field. Frank Marshall, Rob Weisbach and Montillo will also produce the DreamWorks project.

Honors

named Yorn one of "Hollywood's Top 100 Attorneys" in 2015,, and 2018. The Hollywood Reporter also listed Yorn among "America's Top 100 Entertainment Attorneys" in 2013 and 2014. Variety included Yorn in the "Entertainment Attorneys Impact List" in 2009 along with the 2012, 2015 and 2017 "Legal Impact Report", a list of the top in-house attorneys, litigators and transactional lawyers in entertainment.

Family

Yorn's brother Pete Yorn is a musician. Yorn's brother, Rick, is a talent manager. The three brothers make up what Nikki Finke calls, "The Yorn Dynasty" The brothers grew up in Montville, New Jersey with their father, Dr. Lawrence Yorn, a dentist who was a captain in the Army, and mother, Joan. Yorn's parents moved to Los Angeles in 2000. Joan Yorn is a receptionist at Kevin Yorn's law firm.
In 1996, he married film producer Julie Silverman in a Jewish ceremony in Tarrytown, New York. They later divorced in 2005.