Patric M. Verrone was a Future Tense fellow at New America.
He is a television writer, attorney, and former president of the Writers Guild of America, West. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College where he was an officer of The Harvard Lampoon and earned his J.D. from Boston College Law School after serving as editor of the Boston College Law Review. He is admitted to practice in California and Florida and has contributed to various legal and profession publications and blogs including a 10-year stint as issue editor of the Annual Entertainment Law issue of Los Angeles Lawyer magazine. He has been an adjunct law lecturer at Loyola Law School and UCLA Extension. His television writing credits include The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Larry Sanders Show, The Critic, The Simpsons, Pinky and the Brain, Rugrats, Muppets Tonight!, Class of 3000, and all three incarnations of Matt Groening’s animated sci-fi comedy Futurama. He has been nominated for 11 Emmys in four categories and won three. He has also received an Environmental Media Award, two ASIFA Annie Awards, a People’s Choice Award nomination, the Writers Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Animation Writing, and the Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel’s Labor Counsel of the Year Award. He was #75 in the 2008 Time online poll of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, after leading the Writers Guilds through a 100-day strike that won writers their first contract covering the Internet. He continues to serve on the WGAW board of directors as well as the boards of Sci-Fest LA and the Harvard Club of Southern California, and as a trustee of The Humanitas Prize. He has spoken all over the globe on media, entertainment, and law including testimony before the Federal Communications Commission, the United States Senate Commerce Committee, and both houses of the California state legislature. He is married to fellow TV writer and novelist Maiya Williams. They have three children who want to be writers and two dogs who want to direct.