The Rise of Ramo from Two-Person Law Firm to Industry Player

“Elsa’s whole thing was we do good negotiating, but we move quickly and turn deals as quickly as we possibly can,” recalls Wilkes. “And I said, ‘That’s great. Let’s do it.’”

The New York-based Wilkes asked Ramo if they could have a daily morning call to discuss all their open deals. When she suggested they talk at 7 a.m. Pacific, he asked if she had any client calls before that, because he wanted to be her first call of the of the day. She told him that yes, she had calls at 6:45 and 6:30 a.m., so they set the call for 5 a.m. her time, every day.

Ramo went on to work on deals for numerous Imagine projects, including the Emmy-winning documentary features “Lucy and Desi” (2022) and “Jim Henson: Idea Man” (2024) and Ron Howard’s upcoming fact-based survival thriller “Eden,” starring Jude Law.

“She helped us establish what are now our precedents, specifically for our docs, with all the major platforms,” says Wilkes. “And in every instance, she was able to get stuff that was above and beyond what a standard producer deal would look like off the street.”

Producer Keith Kjarval, who’s worked with the firm on such films as 2018’s “Dragged Across Concrete” and Renny Harlin’s upcoming “The Beast,” starring Samuel L. Jackson, first encountered Ramo as an opposing counsel.

“She represented an investor that was putting money into my film, and she clobbered us,” laughs Kjarval. “And she did it in such an articulate and intelligent and very, very strategic manner.” When the deal was done, Kjarval called Ramo, set up a lunch and told her, “I want that in my life.”

Producer Anne Clements (“Quinceañera,” “Chick Fight”), who’s worked with Ramo since the earliest days of her firm, compares her to fictional Washington, D.C., fixer Olivia Pope (portrayed by Kerry Washington) on the TV series “Scandal.”

“She’s the one you call at all hours of the day with any problem, and whatever comes out of her mouth is the solution,” says Clements.

Ramo learned about strength and perseverance from her parents, Syrian immigrants who came to Southern California in the late 1970s. When they arrived, her mother was already pregnant with her, and her father, a dentist in his native country, had to go through the medical licensing process all over again. Initially, he worked in a gas station, improving his English-language skills, then got a job cleaning dental instruments. Her mother — by this time pregnant with Elsa’s younger sister —enrolled at UCLA to study for a computer science degree.

On a shelf in her new second-floor office, Ramo keeps mementos that remind her of her parents. On her left, there’s a portrait of Madonna, which recalls the time her father splurged on tenth row tickets for the pair to see the singer’s Who’s That Girl World Tour at Anaheim Stadium in 1987, her first concert. On her right sits an impressionistic painting of a woman titled “Powerful Dancer,” given to her by her mother.

“My mom is Middle Eastern, but very Americanized and Westernized,” explains Ramo. “She always focuses on leaning into your femininity. Like you can be powerful, you can be business-oriented and all these things, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be a girl.” From her father, she got fearlessness, “some of which is naïve fearlessness,” she allows, “but it’s given me so much courage, when, probably, I should have had none.”

Ramo also got the classic immigrant parents’ career mandate, with an added clause from mom.

“My mother said that I wasn’t allowed to even really have a boyfriend till I was done with either law school or medical school,” laughs Ramo.

The firm’s leadership boasts two other first-generation Americans: Ramo’s fellow managing partner Michelle Chang and senior partner Erika Canchola, whose parents emigrated from Korea and Mexico, respectively. It’s also dominated by women.

“I don’t think we ever sought out to be like we’re only hiring women or only the women are partners,” says Canchola, who specializes in production legal for companies like Skydance Television (“Reacher,” “Fubar”). “Before we started having more male partners and associates, it just kind of naturally of grew that way.”

Ramo brought Canchola on board as her intern — and very first employee — in the summer of 2005, when her office was a tiny rundown trailer amidst a collection of other trailers, since removed, on the Universal Studios backlot by the L.A. River.

“My boyfriend at the time was running production services, and he introduced me to a bunch of guys making digital horror movies on the backlot,” recalls Ramo. “They said, ‘You can have a free space here, but you have to work for us for free,’ like quid pro quo. It was crazy. I would walk over to, like, New York Street and these people that I’m sure had never filmed a movie in their life would be shooting a crash scene.”

It was into this atmosphere that Canchola arrived on a break from Boston University School of Law School to have her interview with Ramo, which included a studio tour in a borrowed golf cart.

“She was like, ‘This is amazing!’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m on the backlot. You can work for me. We don’t have to come to work until 10 a.m.,’ because at that point I didn’t really have any business,” says Ramo.

When Chang came aboard in late 2010, a few months out of Pepperdine Law School, the firm had moved into a small office in a building on South Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills.

“Things were starting to pick up and they just needed another body,” says Chang, who had planned to work as in-house attorney for an entertainment company. “At the time, whatever job came my way, I would take it.”

At first, space was so tight that Chang sat on a coffee table and worked from her laptop, because there was no room for another desk. But it wasn’t long before the firm started hiring more staff, forcing it to move to a larger space on another floor in the same building.

A key client in Ramo’s rapid growth has been Boardwalk Pictures, which it has worked with on such projects as the long-running Netflix show “Chef ’s Table,” the sports docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham” and the reality show “Paul American.”

Boardwalk founder and CEO Andrew Fried remembers a pivotal moment with Ramo following the Season 1 premiere of “Chef’s Table” at the Tribeca Film Festival back in 2015.

“We were going to some party and, in the backseat of a taxi, we laid out what the next 10 years were going to be,” recalls Fried. “And as we look back on the success that we’ve shared and the successes that we’ve had separately, that conversation was incredibly meaningful.”

The firm’s biggest growth spurt came during the pandemic, when the streaming wars hit their peak at the same time scripted production was forced to shut down, causing the demand for unscripted production to go through the roof.

“At one point, I think I was overseeing nine attorneys,” recalls Chang. “It was definitely a lot of churning.”

As the staff grew, so did their need for office space at their South Beverly Drive address.

“We moved in that building eight times, going from floor to floor,” says Ramo. “I always aspired to be in the penthouse … and I ended up in the penthouse, but we still had most of our staff on a separate floor. And taking an elevator to see co-workers just wasn’t working right.”

Still, the decision to leave Beverly Hills and the prestige it confers for what some might see as the less-glamorous environs of Culver City wasn’t always an easy one for Ramo, who admits to struggling with imposter syndrome.

But such growing pains are typical for a 20-year-old.

“It’s sort of like when you move out of your family house and into your own home,” observes Canchola. “You feel like you’ve accomplished something by getting it, but you still have these warm feelings for the place that you grew up in.”