Hot Practice

By Margaret Graham Tebo

Entertainment and sports law is about more than swimming pools and movie stars

Do you dream of hobnobbing with celebrities, receiving locker room passes, or being thanked by a client on a televised award show? If so, entertainment and sports law might be just the specialty for you.

But before you start making room in your Rolodex for the home phone numbers of the rich and famous, make sure you understand: This is still the practice of law. There are contracts, negotiations, issues, and egos. If anything, according to those who practice this sort of law, it's just another day at the office-only the clients can be even more demanding, and in many cases less business savvy, than in other practice areas.

"This is not all glamour and rubbing shoulders with stars," says Gary Watson, chair of the Committee on Motion Pictures, Television, Cable, and Radio of the American Bar Association's Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries. "This is the practice of law, and you have to know the idiosyncrasies of the industry and how deals are done."

Watson, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer, represents both studios and "talent"-actors, writers, and directors. His practice is primarily devoted to negotiating deals for studios to purchase scripts or rights to a novel or someone's real-life story, and hiring writers, producers, directors, and, finally, actors on behalf of studio clients.

"The real challenge is dealing with the personalities of artistic people," Watson says. "We all have our habits and passions and ways we handle things. You have to be prepared to deal with that artistic temperament and with people who are much more focused on the creative side than on the business side of things."

But Phillip Hochberg, who chairs the forum's Sports Law Committee, says a bigger pitfall is the fact that most states don't require any sort of license to hold oneself out as an "agent."

"Be very careful," Hochberg advises. "Representation of athletes is not limited to members of the bar. As a representative of sports talent, you're going to find yourself in competition with a lot of people who are not subject to the same ethical considerations as lawyers are."

Competition for clients can be cutthroat in the entertainment and sports industries, too. Because fewer movies are being made, competition for the best clients is keen, Watson says. The same can be true of competition for the best athletes, according to Hochberg.

"At one point, there were actually more agents registered with the National Football League than there were players," Hochberg notes.

And even in the comparatively sedate world of book publishing, the merger of several major publishing houses has made it imperative that a lawyer representing authors know his or her stuff.

"You have to be prepared to know the average amounts of royalties on various sorts of books, to know which rights to give up in the initial contract and which to withhold for later negotiation," says Eric Rayman, who heads the forum's Literary Publishing Committee. "It's about the negotiation, not the celebrity."

Especially in a lawyer's first few years, he says, the glamour of the job may be limited to "touching a paper that was touched by a star."

Still, for those with a passion for entertainment and sports law, the field does provide for potentially lucrative and interesting work. And even if dealing with celebrity egos doesn't interest you, there are many other ways to be involved in these industries.

If you like sports, for instance, you might get involved in the financing and building of stadiums and arenas, Hochberg says. Or, for both athletes and actors, there is the whole category of merchandising and sub-rights for things such as action figures, posters, clothing, and so on. In publishing, there are issues such as First Amendment rights, libel, and copyright. And for all of the talent represented, there is the ever-present issue of their personal privacy and right to control publicity about them. There are also issues of intellectual property rights, labor law, antitrust law, and tax law that are important to clients in this field.

The area of entertainment and sports law can be broken down into three components, according to Eric Schwartz, a professor of intellectual property law at Georgetown University: the policy issues, such as what is the law and what should it be; the transactional, such as the specifics of negotiation and contracts; and litigation, which occurs when someone believes his or her rights have been violated, such as misuse of copyrighted material, violation of contractual obligations, and so forth.

"The Internet raises a lot of questions in all of these arenas, especially for copyright issues," says Schwartz, who chairs the ABA Intellectual Property Law Section's Broadcasting, Sound Recordings, and Performing Artists Committee. "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act attempts to address some of the policy issues about who owns which rights on the Internet. The terms of that act will impact the way contracts get written and the way disputes get settled, but it's only a first step. There will be plenty of work for lawyers to do on this sort of thing."

And, there is more and more crossover among the various industries represented, as athletes become actors, actors write books, and authors sell their novels to be made into movies.

For those whose love of the arts is less about stargazing and more about the art itself, there are many opportunities to provide services in the trenches. Rayman, who is an editor at The New Yorker magazine and who teaches media law at Yeshiva University, also volunteers to advise student newspapers at high schools and colleges about First Amendment and related issues. He is also a member of New York's Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts public interest group, where he helps to advise start-up arts organizations.

"Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and similar groups are an excellent place for young lawyers to get involved, meet practitioners of this sort of law, find mentors, and learn the business," Rayman says.

All of the lawyers interviewed for this column advise students not to slack off on their studies if their hearts are set on a career in this arena.

"The best thing you can do to break into this business is do really well in law school and get hired by a prestigious firm with a good entertainment practice," Watson says.

If that sort of entree into the entertainment and sports law field isn't in the cards for you, then expect to start at the bottom and earn your way up.

"There are a lot of multi-degreed people working in the mailrooms at big talent agencies," Watson says. "The biggest agencies have training programs that require trainees to begin in the mailroom, where they will learn who the players are and how the hierarchy works. Eventually, those mailroom people become assistants to agents, and then maybe junior agents handling minor clients. The lucky and talented few who hang in there may someday be senior agents with major clients."

All three lawyers advise students to take intellectual property courses and to learn as much as possible about contracts and negotiation skills.

"Become a good lawyer," Hochberg says. "It's a lot more than just reading the sports pages."

If you truly think entertainment and sports law is for you, expect that beyond all the hard work, there will be rewards, Rayman says.

"It can be your hobby as well as your profession," he says. "There's little satisfaction greater than making your avocation into your vocation and doing work you enjoy."

Resources on Entertainment and Sports Law

For information about upcoming conferences and events planned by the ABA's Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries (many of which are available at a discount for students), log on to www.abanet.org/forums/entsports, or call 312-988-5666. Membership in the forum is $10 a year for law students and includes a subscription to the quarterly Entertainment and Sports Lawyer. Committees include Motion Pictures, Television, Cable, and Radio; Music and Personal Appearances; Legitimate Theater and Performing Arts; Sports; Literary Publishing; Interactive Media and New Technologies; Visual Arts; and Merchandising and Licensing.

The Section of Intellectual Property Law (312-988-5595, www. abanet.org/intelprop) offers students discounted memberships at $10, which includes a subscription to the quarterly Intellectual Property Law Newsletter. An array of publications and conferences are listed on the section's web site.

To join any ABA section, division, or forum, call 800-285-2221.

Margaret Graham Tebo, a former Student Lawyer student editor, is a writer, lawyer, teacher, and literary agent in suburban Chicago.