Attorneys
Principal
DALIAH SAPER is a member of the Illinois Bar and both the General Bar and Trial Bar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. She has handled many high profile cases (including one she argued before the Illinois Supreme Court) and is regularly interviewed on national tv, radio, and in several publications including: Fox News, CNBC, ABC News, The Chicago Tribune, WGN Radio, NPR, and a slew of smaller websites. She has repeatedly received the honor of being named a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers magazine (2009,2010,2011,2012,2013), is recognized as a leading Media and Entertainment lawyer by Chambers and Partners, featured on the cover of TheXemplar magazine, profiled by the Chicago Law Bulletin, and has been nominated for the prestigious ATHENA Young Professional Leadership Award. This year, Law Bulletin Publishing Company selected Daliah Saper as a “40 under 40,” an incredibly competitive list of accomplished attorneys compiled from over 1250 qualified nominations. (Read the detailed profile here.)
Daliah is an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, teaching a Sports and Entertainment Law course. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, teaching an Internet Law course. She is on the faculty of PLI, Practicing Law Institute, and has been selected by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society to be a member of Harvard’s new Online Media Legal Network (OMLN). In addition Daliah conducts Seminars at Saper Law on a monthly basis, and is a frequent lecturer, panelist, and instructor for organizations around the city and the country. (For Daliah’s latest speaking engagements, please click on News.)
Daliah received her J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law, where she was a staff member on the Journal of Law Technology and Policy and served as President of the Intellectual Property Law Society. Her work experience includes positions at Brinks Hofer Gilson and Lione, a large intellectual property law firm; Lawyers for the Creative Arts, a non-profit organization assisting artists; and the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights organization. She has also worked at Playboy Enterprises, Inc., assisting with the maintenance and enforcement of Playboy’s global trademark portfolio.
Prior to starting her own firm, Daliah gained experience as a commercial litigator and negotiated settlement agreements on behalf of individuals sued by the Recording Industry Association of America. She also served as Vice President and in-house counsel of diLuce Productions, Inc., a Chicago based public relations and marketing consulting firm specializing in event production.
Daliah is an active member of the Chicago Bar Association, the Chicago Fashion Foundation, the Technology Executives Club, the Decalogue Society, the Standard Club, and IFP (Independent Feature Project). Through her firm, she supports and sponsors many technology and arts related organizations such as Tech Cocktail and the Midwest Independent Film Festival. She also volunteers for Lawyers for the Creative Arts, Kartemquin Films, Chicago Filmmakers, Women in Film, and Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti Foundation.
Finally, Daliah has extensive overseas experience, having studied at Fudan University in Shanghai and the City University School of Business in London. She speaks Hebrew and Farsi.
Associates
CHRIS MCELWAIN graduated from the University of Southern California, Gould School of Law, where he served on the Southern California Law Review. He spent a semester during his third year of law school at Hong Kong University studying international intellectual property law. His article on fair use in copyright law, “Fact in the World,” won second place nationally in an ASCAP-sponsored legal writing competition, was published in the Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., and was reprinted in the Entertainment, Publishing and the Arts Handbook as one of the best entertainment law articles of 2011.
Prior to beginning his legal career, Chris taught English for two years at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, China. He has also performed with the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah and the Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival and California Shakespeare Company in Southern California. His parody of Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven has sold thousands of copies and continues to top the parody and satire charts on Amazon.com.
Chris is a member of the Chicago Bar Association and volunteers with Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind).
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