Described as a 'flamboyant renegade', Mr Lazar provided counsel to some of the biggest names in entertainment during the 1950s and 1960s, including jazz legends Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley as well as comic Lenny Bruce. Poets Allan Ginsberg and Maya Angelou were also counted among Mr Lazar's personal friends during his legal career.

Beyond his status as a prolific and eccentric entertainment lawyer, Mr Lazar was well known for the role he played in a scandal which almost tumbled one of the biggest shareholder class action law firms in the US. Bored of law, Mr Lazar picked up 'in-and-out' stock trading in the late 1960s, trading $300m worth of stock (most of it related to mergers and acquisitions) in 1967 alone. From the 1970s, Mr Lazar began working with class-action giant Milberg Weiss by purchasing the stock of potential corporate targets and then later serving as a plaintiff.

Mr Lazar was eventually indicted over the ruse after participating in more than 70 Milberg Weiss lawsuits and allegedly claiming over $2.6m in kickbacks from the law firm.

'Seymour was living in an unregulated age,' commented biographer Sheridan Hill in a New York Times obituary for Mr Lazar. 'He was engaging in arbitrage before anyone called it arbitrage. The same with entertainment law. He was doing deals because he saw they were there to be done.'

Sources: New York Times; Billboard