Britney Spears Can Hire a New Lawyer of Her Choice, Judge Rules

The decision came as the singer continues to challenge whether her life should be governed by a conservatorship set up 13 years ago on her behalf.

More than 13 years after being deemed mentally unfit to choose her own legal representation, Britney Spears can hire a high-powered Hollywood lawyer, a Los Angeles judge ruled on Wednesday, signaling a new phase in the battle to end the conservatorship that controls the singer’s life. The decision by Judge Brenda Penny came at the first hearing since Ms. Spears, 39, called the conservatorship that she has lived under since 2008 abusive and said that she wanted it to end without her having to undergo additional psychiatric evaluations. Ms. Spears’s emotional speech on June 23 triggered a flurry of court filings in recent weeks as those involved in the conservatorship traded blame for the singer’s unhappiness and professed lack of personal agency. Her longtime court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, asked to resign, as did a wealth management firm that was set to share control of Ms. Spears’s estate with her father, James P. Spears.