Elon Musk has been battling his former protégé Sam Altman for nearly two years in a very public dispute over the future of OpenAI, with the Tesla CEO filing several lawsuits against the maker of ChatGPT.
To fight this battle, Musk has assembled a team of elite lawyers led by Jaymie Parkkinen, who also shines as a clown.
Elon Musk’s fight against OpenAI is led by his company along with others. Meanwhile, Sam Altman assembled his own team of elite law firms, including Morrison & Foerster and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz.
An unusual career choice has put Jaymie Parkkinen, an attorney at Toberoff & Associates, in the spotlight. Here’s everything you need to know about it.
Who is Jaymie Parkkinen?
Jaymie Parkinnen is one of the leading lawyers spearheading Elon Musk’s legal battle against OpenAI, which he launched after maker ChatGPT restructured from a hybrid nonprofit to a for-profit company.
A lawyer by day and a clown by night, Parkkinen is credited with fighting hard in discovery litigation for Elon Musk’s case.
“All my comedy friends — none of them can believe I’m a lawyer. And none of my lawyer friends can believe me doing a clown,” Parkkinen told Business Insider.
If your mind imagines Jaymie Parkkinen as a comic with a red nose and colorful hair, you’d be far from reality. According to him, clowning is a highly conceived physical comedy like Charlie Chaplin once did. He uses the word in a way that ordinary people would describe “improv”.
“When you take off all the social masks that we all wear, if you strip away gender and politics and money and status and power, and you’re just your raw human self without all the trappings of society — who are you? And the clown tries to answer that question,” Parkkinen told Business Insider.
He joined Toberoff & Associates out of an interest in intellectual property law. According to the firm’s website, Jaymie Parkkinen is a partner at the firm and his practice focuses on intellectual property and entertainment matters.
In 2017, he graduated from UCLA Law School in the top 3% of his class and received his Juris Doctorate. Parkkinen also serves as an adjunct professor of law.
However, the seriousness of his work does not prevent him from his artistic endeavors. He also runs his own “Clown Cardio business” in Los Angeles, which he opened after realizing the physical toll of clowning.
Parikken also claims that the performance side of clowning has also helped him navigate the legal world, which he sees as a performance-demanding world.
“At the end of the day, it’s just about connecting with people, just like being a lawyer,” he said. “You connect with the judge, the jury, the opposing counsel.
