Mr. Hand is one of the pre-eminent fashion lawyers in the country. He has been featured and profiled in numerous media outlets and publications including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, the American Bar Association Journal, Women’s Wear Daily and The Business of Fashion. Douglas is a member of the Business Advisory Committee of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), on the Advisory Board of the CFDA’s Incubator and a member of the CFDA Fashion Awards Guild. Douglas is also an adjunct professor of Fashion Law at both NYU School of Law (where he also sits on the Fashion & Luxury Council) and Cardozo School of Law (where he also sits on the Board of Advisors for the Fashion, Arts, Media and Entertainment (FAME) Law Center). He is on the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) Foundation Board of Directors as well as FIT’s Couture Council. Douglas is also a member of the Joe’s Blackbook Foundation Advisory Board.
Douglas began his legal career in the New York and Paris offices of Shearman & Sterling, representing domestic and international clients in public and private transactions. Notable deals include representing Citicorp in its merger with Travelers and representing Fiat S.p.A. in its strategic alliance with General Motors.
A former NCAA athlete in three sports and an avid fan, Douglas has been a contributor and speaker at conferences on the sports and entertainment sector and its intersection with the business of fashion.
He sits on numerous advisory boards in the fashion industry as well a charitable institutions including The Kitchen (a supporter of interdisciplinary art that has incubated such established “experimental” artists as David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and Bill T. Jones) and Courier’s Kids (an organization dedicated to bringing tennis to inner-city youths).