After more than a decade of fighting for her right to secure her own legal representation, Britney Spears may be on the cusp of getting a new lawyer.
According to the New York Times, Spears has been in talks with Mathew S. Rosengart—a former federal prosecutor and prominent attorney in the entertainment industry—to discuss the logistics of his firm taking over her case. Rosengart reportedly plans to attend a hearing on Wednesday to initiate the process.
This news arrives on the heels of the resignation of Spears’s previous counsel, Sam Ingham, the court-appointed lawyer who has represented the singer since 2008. Ingham stepped down last week following a bombshell New Yorker investigation, which cited sources who believed he was “loyal to the conservatorship and to Jamie [Spears], despite nominally representing Spears” and said he reported Spears’s activities to her dad. During her testimony in court, Spears also alleged that Ingham never informed her that she could petition to end her conservatorship.
Spears has tried to independently retain an attorney multiple times before, but from almost the beginning of her conservatorship, lawyers upholding the legal arrangement have argued that she “lacked the capacity” to do so. Under the conservatorship, she was not allowed to even meet with a lawyer.
In this instance, a lawyer representing Spears’s mother has requested that the court allow the singer to hire her own attorney. Spears also made the request explicit in her testimony last month: “I’ve grown with a personal relationship with Sam, my lawyer ... but I haven’t really had the opportunity by my own self to actually handpick my own lawyer by myself,” she said. “And I would like to be able to do that.”
Still, whether or not Rosengart is allowed to represent Spears will be up to a judge, according to the Times. If the judge signs off on it, the arrangement could mark a significant turning point for Spears’s case, which—at least in the court of public opinion—is becoming stronger and stronger every day.