educator lawyer politician business executive
Joel Z. Hyatt was born on May 6, 1950, in Cleveland, Ohio, to David Zylberberg and Anna B. Zylberberg. He grew up in a family connected to Cleveland and later made the city the base for his legal-services businesses.
Hyatt married Susan Metzenbaum on August 24, 1975. Their family includes Jared Z. Hyatt and Zachary Robert Hyatt. Through his marriage, he became the son-in-law of Howard Metzenbaum, the Democratic United States senator from Ohio.
Hyatt earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College in 1972 and a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 1975. Dartmouth, founded in 1769, is an Ivy League liberal-arts college whose undergraduate tradition emphasizes residential education and broad study across the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
Yale Law School, founded in 1824, is one of the oldest law schools in the United States and is known for legal scholarship, public-service traditions, and a flexible program centered on analytical and interdisciplinary study. Hyatt's legal education preceded his early work in a major New York corporate law firm and his later decision to create a more accessible model of legal practice.
Hyatt began his legal career as an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City. Paul, Weiss is a major American law firm founded in 1875 and historically associated with litigation, corporate law, public service, and influential figures in the legal profession. Hyatt left the firm in 1977 to return to Cleveland and establish a different model of legal practice.
In 1977, Hyatt and Susan Hyatt founded Hyatt Legal Services. The Cleveland-based firm used storefront offices, advertising, and relatively accessible fees to provide legal assistance to working- and middle-income clients, particularly in matters such as divorces and wills. Hyatt also became a senior partner, and his public advocacy helped challenge professional resistance to lawyer advertising and expanded discussion of how legal services could be distributed.
Hyatt founded HLS Management Company in 1987 and served as its chairman and chief executive officer. In 1990 he founded Hyatt Legal Plans, Inc., an enterprise that developed employer-sponsored group legal plans and treated legal assistance as an employee benefit. Hyatt Legal Plans later became part of MetLife after its acquisition in 1997, and the business continued as MetLife Legal Plans.
Hyatt later entered media and technology. He co-founded Current TV with Al Gore and served as chief executive officer of Current Media. Current TV combined professionally produced programming with user-generated content, citizen journalism, and viewer participation; the channel received Emmy recognition and was acquired by Al Jazeera in 2013.
He also taught entrepreneurship at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and legal ethics and professional responsibility at Stanford Law School. Stanford, founded in 1885 in California's Silicon Valley, combines research-intensive education with close ties to technology and entrepreneurship.
In 2015, Hyatt co-founded Globality, an enterprise-technology company focused on using artificial intelligence to connect organizations with service providers and improve business sourcing. He served as chairman and chief executive officer during the company's development and is chairman of its board.
Hyatt founded Hyatt Legal Services in 1977 and developed a storefront legal-practice model that used advertising and accessible fees to broaden legal assistance for working- and middle-income families.
He founded Hyatt Legal Plans, an employer-sponsored group legal-plan business that helped establish legal assistance as an employee benefit and was later acquired by MetLife.
He co-founded Current TV, a media company that combined professional programming with user-generated content, citizen journalism, and viewer participation.
He co-founded Globality, a technology company that applies artificial intelligence to enterprise sourcing and procurement.
He was the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate from Ohio in 1994.
(Co-authored with Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden. Publish...)
2000Hyatt has been associated with the Democratic Party through national party activity, the Senate Democratic Leadership Circle, service as an assistant treasurer of the Democratic National Committee from 1981 to 1983, and his 1994 campaign for the United States Senate from Ohio. He won the Democratic nomination in the 1994 primary but lost the general election to Republican Mike DeWine.
His political work developed within the Democratic tradition of the late twentieth-century United States, which combined support for civil rights, social welfare, organized labor, and government responsibility for public services with an increasingly strong emphasis on health care, reproductive rights, and economic opportunity. During the 1994 campaign, Hyatt publicly emphasized abortion rights and health care while presenting himself as an entrepreneurial lawyer and successor to his father-in-law, Senator Howard Metzenbaum.
Hyatt's public statements present access to legal assistance as part of the functioning of a democratic society. His business model treated legal services as something that should be made more affordable and available to ordinary families rather than reserved primarily for affluent clients or large organizations.
His later work in media and technology continued an interest in expanding participation and access. Current TV emphasized viewer contribution and citizen journalism, while Globality applies artificial-intelligence tools to broaden participation in enterprise service markets.
Hyatt's organizational work has included participation in higher education, civic, political, Jewish communal, scientific, and business associations. He served as a trustee of Morehouse College, a historically Black liberal-arts college founded in 1867 in Atlanta, and as a fellow of Brandeis University, founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian university with a strong tradition in the liberal arts and social sciences.
He also served on the board of the Center for New Democracy, participated in the United Jewish Appeal's National Young Leadership Cabinet, and served on the National Executive Committee of the American Jewish Congress. His later civic and professional connections included the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, the Coalition for Democratic Values, and the Young Presidents' Organization.
Trustee
Morehouse College Board of Trustees , United States
Fellow
Brandeis University Board of Fellows , United States
Board member
Center for New Democracy , United States
Member
United Jewish Appeal National Young Leadership Cabinet , United States
Member of the National Executive Committee
American Jewish Congress , United States
Member of the board of advisers
Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics , United States
1988 - present
Founding member and trustee
Coalition for Democratic Values , United States
1990 - present
Member
Young Presidents' Organization , United States
Hyatt has described his early decision to leave corporate law and establish a storefront legal clinic as an adventurous and idealistic choice. In a 1984 interview, he said that the original motivation for his legal-services business was a commitment to the role of law in a democratic society and to making legal assistance more widely available.
Quotes from others about the person
Henry Kissinger described Hyatt in a 1994 public address as a person he had known since Hyatt's years at Yale Law School and referred to Hyatt's earlier work teaching inner-city children. Hyatt has also been described in professional profiles as an entrepreneur who challenged established assumptions about the delivery of legal services.
Hyatt is married to Susan Metzenbaum, whom he married on August 24, 1975. They have two children, Jared Z. Hyatt and Zachary Robert Hyatt.
He is the son-in-law of Howard Metzenbaum, who represented Ohio in the United States Senate as a Democrat. The family connection linked Hyatt to one of Ohio's prominent Democratic political networks and preceded Hyatt's own 1994 Senate campaign.
