A judge has signed off on changes to the legal team representing Harvey Weinstein in his rape and sexual assault case.
Weinstein appeared briefly in a New York City courthouse on Friday to get Judge James Burke to approve the changes.
The fallen film mogul is replacing defence lawyer Benjamin Brafman with four new lawyers.
They include Jose Baez, who won an acquittal for Florida mother Casey Anthony on charges that she killed her young daughter.
Other members of the legal team are Ronald Sullivan, Pamela Robillard Mackey and ex-Manhattan prosecutor Duncan Levin.
Weinstein did not comment as he entered the courthouse with his new lawyers.
He is charged with raping a woman in 2013 and performing a forcible sex act on another in 2006. He denies the allegations.
“Welcome to the New York State Supreme Court,” Judge Burke told Weinstein’s new lawyers.
Weinstein, 66, and Brafman, 70, announced last week that they had “agreed to part ways amicably”, a month after they lost a hard-fought bid to get the case thrown out.
Weinstein’s trial is tentatively scheduled for May.
Mr Baez and Mr Sullivan, a 52-year-old Harvard law professor, teamed up to successfully defend American football star Aaron Hernandez against murder charges in 2017.
Hernandez, in prison for a 2015 murder conviction, killed himself five days later.
Ms Mackey, based in Denver, represented Kobe Bryant when the former basketball star was accused of raping a 19-year-old at a Colorado resort in 2003.
The charges were dismissed when prosecutors said the accuser was no longer prepared to give evidence.
Mr Levin is a former top deputy under Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
Actress Rose McGowan, one of the first of dozens of women to accuse Weinstein of sexual misconduct, blasted Mr Baez and Mr Sullivan for agreeing to represent Weinstein after they defended her in a drug case last year. She called it a “major conflict of interest”.
Mr Baez and Mr Sullivan said in a statement that McGowan’s case had nothing to do with Weinstein and they were certain there was no conflict.
McGowan, who pleaded no contest, has accused Weinstein of having someone plant the cocaine that Virginia authorities said they found in her wallet.
Judge Burke warned Weinstein that Mr Baez and Mr Sullivan would not be able to cross-examine McGowan “as vigorously as they might have otherwise” if prosecutors were to call her as a witness because they could not use information they learned in representing her.
The judge said the lawyers could have used emails uncovered in Weinstein’s criminal case in which the film producer discussed McGowan’s planting allegations to aid her defence.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for March 8.
