 Okay. Good evening, distinguished guests, attendees, and panelists. My name is Jeff Kostaski, and I'm president of IPLA, the Intellectual Property Law Association, at Roger Williams University School of Law. I would like to welcome you to Real World IP. Before we begin, I'd like everyone to know that this panel will be recorded. Please write to me at IPLA at g.RWU.edu, if you would like to be sent the link for the recording. We have a great lineup for you tonight. Reagan Smith had Spotify's Global Public Policy Initiatives. Previously, she led the government's efforts to implement the Music Modernization Act and set up a copyright small claims board as general counsel of the U.S. Copyright Office. She also practiced for a number of years in IP litigation and transactions. Jay Fieldcough is deputy general counsel at GBH, Boston's public broadcaster and the leading producer of public media content for TV, radio, the internet, and new media. Jay is also professor at Berkeley College of Music, where he teaches courses on legal aspects of the music business. Elliot Groffman represents a wide array of musical artists in all genres, including Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, and the Low Anthem in that order of importance. I'm kidding. Absolutely. After paying dues as a young associate at litigation firms, Elliot joined a leading music transactional firm in the mid-80s before he and his partners, Michael Guido and Rosemary Carroll, formed what is now Carol Guido, Groffman, Cohen, Barr, and Karellian. The firm is talent-focused and represents musical artists, as well as independent entrepreneurs in the record label publishing world, independent concert, and festival promoters in related fields. Leta Rosario began her career as a Wall Street lawyer, doing mergers and acquisitions, and got into entertainment when her roommate from college was offered a recording deal, Crystal Waters. Leta has negotiated record deals and music publishing deals with all the major record labels, as well as TV and film deals for talent and production companies with the major broadcasters and streaming companies. Her clients have included Missy Elliot, Peaches and Herb, Parliament Funkadelic members, Cameo members, Cisco, Feddywebs Production Company, and many others. Welcome again to all the distinguished panelists. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you as well to Veronica Paricio and the Office of Career Development for co-sponsoring the event. Special thank you to Professor Niky Kukas, our faculty advisor and IP professor who made this panel mandatory attendance for her class. I look forward to your fair use lecture tomorrow. Thank you to Iplis Board, Morgan Irving Tatiana Christopher and Eshita, and thank you to Polina Volfovich for the beautiful poster. And thanks to all the attendees. Feel free to put your questions in the chat as we go along. This panel, Real World IP, came about from the idea of my classmate and friend Torrin Quinn who approached me over the summer asking if IPLA would do a panel with IP practitioners to tell us what it's really like out there in the real world. That is to say, what do we need to know to practice IP outside of analyzing appellate court decisions to uncover holdings of law to use on issues spotting final exam questions, you know, our daily work here in law school? Or maybe that's exactly what it's like. Well, I said to Torrin, you know, I'm so sorry but my wife is pregnant, we have a toddler at home and I can't take anything more right now on top of law school. Well, the baby was born a month ago and Torrin is a hell of a persuasive advocate. So here we are. Torrin, thank you for your initiative to help catalyze this panel. I hope these panelists can answer your Real World IP questions. I am of course newborn sleep deprived so I hand over the proverbial mic to you Torrin. Welcome again to Real World IP. Thank you, Jeff. As Jeff said, this is for all of us to get a real look into what IP is all about. Specifically, we have some very prominent copyright and IP lawyers with us and I cannot wait to hear where they've been, how they got there and the advice that they'll give us for us to possibly break into the field and find out if it's something we wanna go down and of the such. So for my first question, I'd like all of us to kind of get a sense of all the panelists. If I do recall, Regan is not in here yet so we will go through. Jeff, if you can please note when she gets in here, we'll catch her up. Sure thing. But let's start off with just the general like how did you get into IP law and where are you now and kind of how you got there? So if we can go, we'll start off with Jay. Okay, well, I'll finish my story and there'll be a few minutes left over for the rest of the panel. When you're approaching your mid sixties, the story is getting longer and longer. Well, I do this work, I think I ended up doing this work in part because when I went to law school without any clear sense of what I wanted to do, I imagined working in an area that interested me and my interests were culture, books, music, film, TV, sports. And so I had the notion that I would go to law school and one way or another end up working in an area not only that we're the subject interested me but it would lead to me working with people who interested me and I spend my time for the most part when I was in private practice doing mostly music business stuff and for the last 25 years in-house at GBH spending my days talking with smart talented creative people and that's the way I like to spend my days. And so, I could have started by saying I had an early introduction to copyright infringement that somehow got under my skin because I can remember my fourth grade report on President Chester A. Arthur which I have no doubt was taken word for word from the world book encyclopedia and surely would have been an early copyright infringement. I don't know that I think I used so much that fair use would not apply. So it's mostly where I wanted to work in an area that interested me with the sorts of people that interest me and that's I guess how I ended up here. All right, and Elliot? And I'm pleased to say I was exactly the opposite. And fascinating to hear, right? You were just kind of interested in the general culture and the space and like go to law school and I'll figure something out. I was completely obsessed with music. I mean, my entire life was is and always will be music. And I was a failed artist, which in retrospect looks kind of funny, I guess, as I'm looking at myself on the screen going, really I was going to be a rock star, but I was going to be a rock star and had a series of mediocre bands and grew up in that area of New Jersey, where at least my art bands used to open up for Bruce Springsteen and his bands. And if we were really, really, really good, they would let us carry their amps up the stairs of these rickety clubs. But my driving interest in life was music. And when I finally said, okay, I'll go to law school and figure it out, it was purely to be a music lawyer. Even though in 1976, and yes, I'm dating myself, it was a much more wide open game, right? I remember really the 60s had happened, but the business structures and things were still very, very, very scattered and weird. We were only a decade away from here, sign this and we'll give you a pink Cadillac instead of royalties. But things were changing dramatically, but law school curriculums were not nearly as evolved I mean, as they are today. So it was kind of like, what are you going to do to figure it out? And then we worked my way into the field, but somebody actually said, I got a question from Jeff, if you weren't in IP law, what field of law would you practice in? And I don't know, if I hadn't gotten to a music practice and then discovered that I loved it because there's two separate things, right? Getting there and then feeling, is there a there there when you get there? I probably would have, I don't know if I'd still be a lawyer, I probably would have gone off someplace into the music world now. Me too. How's that for opposites? I don't think it's an opposites, it's actually the same thing. I spent all my money growing up on records, on LPs, which are in the next room. And so I think it's in some ways really pretty much the same, except you seem to have, you had a sense of where you would end up and I was just guessing. All right, and Lita? Hi, so I'm the exact opposite. I had no interest in music. I did go to a school for the performing arts, the Almalua School for Performing Arts in Boston when I was growing up. It's not a primary school, it was an after-school program but we studied, I took piano lessons and dance and everything else and basically found out that I had no talent. And the only two records that I ever bought in my life before becoming a music lawyer was the Jackson Fox first album and a Bob Marley album. My sister was like the music person and I used to just listen to her records and I had no intention whatsoever of being an entertainment lawyer or a music lawyer. I happened to join the debate team. I went to Howard University undergraduate school and I joined the debate team and I was the only female on the debate team and all the males were going to law school and really in competition with them, I was a journalism major, a communications major and they all would tease me and say, oh, you only have good grades because you have easy classes, we're a econ or philosophy or whatever so in competing with them, I decided to go to law school and fortunately I graduated in the top of my class and got a job at a major law firm after law school, Sherman and Sterling in New York and I came in during the late 80s during the Michael Milken hostile takeover era and started out doing corporate securities work in mergers and acquisitions and one day I got a call from my roommate who had been my roommate in college saying that she had been offered a production deal by a music production company in Baltimore and she asked me if I could help her out with that contract which I did but I actually went to another friend of mine who had his own practice and did entertainment law and I kind of watched what he was doing and put my little two cents in but one thing that I noticed at that point in time was that the recording contract was in very many ways just as complicated as some of the financial services contracts that I was working on like agreements among underwriters and things like that in terms of how the money was being calculated and how the recoupment structure was set up, et cetera so I was quite intrigued by that Crystal went on to put out her first record and it went platinum, a song called Gypsy Woman oops, a song called Gypsy Woman that you all may know, la-da-dee, la-da-da I can't sing at all The Curtis Mayfield song? No, no, no No, it's her song Yeah And that's her song, original song And so from there, colleagues of mine kept coming to me, people that went to Howard University with me because at that time it was the time that Puffy was at Howard and there was a lot of activity around the music industry going on so some colleagues that had friends that I went to Howard with asked me to help them out with legal services I had left Sherman and Sterling and I was in DC working out the Securities and Exchange Commission and still doing securities law but at that point I kind of broke off and started working with them to start a record label and the record label ended up producing Drew Hill which is Cisco and Maya who some of you may know, some of you may not you might be in the gap of when they came out in the late 90s and then from there I went out and put out my own shingle and I started representing Missy Elliott who I represented for about 12 years and I'm happy to say I was responsible for and from there went on to represent a bunch of other artists but I would say now is that a lot of my work then was doing producer agreements and side artist agreements, production deals and when the internet kind of came along the whole Napster thing happened the work in the music industry really dried up for me and a lot of my colleagues and at that point I reinvented myself as a litigator I had been farming out litigation for my clients to other firms at that time and I realized that that was a way for me to actually make money one of my major litigations was over the song Who Let the Dogs Out which was like a multi-jurisdictional litigation in Canada, the US, New York and it had implications in Trinidad and in the UK so we had lawyers from all over the world working on that case and so I realized that I was a litigator and so I started doing gation royalty recovery recovery models for recording artists and I went on to kind of have a specialization in termination rights section 203 and 304 termination rights under the copyright and I do a lot of that now and I have my own practice I've hired lots of lawyers to work for me over the years and I oftentimes partner with lawyers at other law firms to do the litigations that I do but I still also do a lot of transactional work which today has turned into a lot of TV and film work as well because obviously there's some cross-pollinization with music. I also do music licensing and some copyright administration. Wonderful, Lita, and I'd like to just say Toran that I saw Reagan Smith is on so if you want to fold her and maybe I'll ask the question Reagan the question on the table is how did you get an IP law? Where are you now and how did you get there? Thanks, Jeff, and I apologize for hopping on a little bit late so right now I'm head of public policy government affairs at Spotify I've been in IP law since I've been an attorney but I started out in business affairs in film production, record label production and musical theater before that and I realized pretty quickly that understanding the legal structures that are guiding some of these production decisions artist signing, distribution opportunities was critical to running a successful business so I went to law school to focus on IP. I got there, I feel like I've done a little bit of everything, I started out at a law firm I did both M&A and litigation at the same time from an IP perspective I don't totally recommend that for a great quality of life but I do recommend it for a great learning experience so because I was interested in copyright and trademarks and branding similar to that I tried to get my hands dirty with all of that work so I was looking at publishers selling their music catalogs to private equity companies before that became a thing as well as litigating patents, trademarks advertising claims, video game disputes then I went to government I had met the head of the copyright office at that time and I eventually became general counsel in the US copyright office that is something that it was a great experience because I think one of the things that is hard to see from a business perspective is the role that government plays in copyright and IP copyright in particular compared to patents or trademarks so one of the things the copyright office does is overseas the rate settings which actually sets the price for certain uses of music which is pretty crazy and it also has regulatory authority so part of my duties there were to advise Congress on policy changes legislation that they might pass certain legislation including the Music Modernization Act or the establishment of a small claims board that the copyright office did pass so then I worked through a lot of industry conversations from many sectors of the industry and figuring out the best ways for the government to implement that and set rules again governing the ways digital streaming services are sending data to collectives which is an intern pay writer so from there I went back in house this time on the DSP side and it has been interesting along the way Thanks, Reg, I feel like I should complete my answer because I've heard of everyone else's stories and I really, I don't think I told you my story about where I am now and how I ended up here so maybe I'll just mention briefly that I've followed to some extent the traditional path of doing as good as I could do in law school and getting a good job with a fancy firm that I had worked for during the summer after my second year of law school I clerked for a judge for a year and then went to that firm where I learned how to be a lawyer I learned I didn't wanna spend my life at a large law firm but I spent four good years learning how to be a lawyer there and during that time it wasn't that hard to build a practice in the music business because none of the clients had any money and none of the other lawyers were looking to represent them in one way or another over the course of the 1980s until the mid-90s I built a practice representing lots of the rock bands and other players in the music business that were based in Boston and the Northeast I left a big firm after four years went out on my own during that time besides lawyering I got involved in some business stuff started a record label that signed a ban some of you may have heard of Uncle Tupelo which later split off into a group that's called Wilco which is now pretty well known and another group that's not so well known maybe I got involved working with a guy named Maurice Starr who was an interesting ride when he was managing and producing new kids on the block at which point they needed the resources of a large law firm and I went back to a large law firm where I ran an entertainment law department until again around 25 years ago when I got the opportunity to move in house at GBH and GBH is not simply a public radio on public television station but with a primary producer of public television content and other content that you'll find on PBS and we produce about a third of the PBS prime time schedule you know great series like Frontline, American Experience, Nova, Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow, Children's Shows that may be some of you I know from teaching at Berkeley that I get a bigger response when I mentioned children's shows like Arthur and Curious George and stuff like that so and my work these days is mostly it's varied but it's mostly representing the people who are producing all of the various content that we produce at GBH. Taurin you're muted, Taurin you're muted, can you hear us? I was saying I'm liking all the different areas that you guys practice in with Regan being able to be in like government which normally when we think of IP law we think of it being more private and not very government driven and all the different sorts of experiences that you guys have. So I think one of the most important questions to ask is kind of like what is the day to day? Like what is it to kind of be an IP lawyer both transactional and litigation wise? So let's start off with Elliot. Yeah, no it's a fascinating hearing and listening leader we've never met Regan, we've never met but just in the course of that just the background Napster hit like a meteor, right? Change the business irrevocably. You made a transition to more litigation obviously still keeping a hand in transactionally as well. And then Regan, there you are. You know, I mean, not only did the digital world just change the way people consume music it really brought government into our lives in a much bigger way, right? The passing of the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act establishing a performance right in digital radio, CRB. Were you there with Jackie Charlesworth or afterwards, Jacqueline Charlesworth? Yeah. Yeah, Jacqueline is great. Yeah, she was in my leadership music class talking about organizations, networking, leadership music based in Nashville was kind of like if you ever want to do anything in Nashville, you have to go through this organization which is corny at times but unbelievably substantive at times. So yeah, the world has changed so dramatically, right? We're all now the new CRB hearings are coming up and Spotify, your current employer, I guess is gonna be fighting for lower rates. Everybody's fighting for higher rates and the allocation between labels and songwriters. I mean, this is not stuff that we talked about in the mid-80s when I first came into the business, right? So the business has changed dramatically and so at the time Napster was circling the planet. You know, I was leaving the Grutman firm and starting our own firm but with a very clear mission statement at that time which is things are gonna change. We can't even begin to figure out exactly how they're gonna change. You can see this transition from the walled garden where the majors manufactured and distributed and promoted to radio and to retail and quotes around promoted and you knew something was changing. So we said, okay, let's stay close to talent because no matter what as distribution models change gotta have something to distribute, right? So, you know, let's stay close to the artists and that has proven to be a very smart strategy for us because the deals are dramatically different than they were 25, 30 years ago but our day to day is still staying on top of what it means to be an artist in our era. Who are the people that they're doing business with? You know, how has the business model changed? I'm sure you're already familiar with 360 deals where record companies after Napster crashed into the business, their answer was, well, let's just take a piece of the touring and the merchandising and the publishing because we can't make enough money selling content. It was really cheery conversations across the negotiating table. So, you know, our day to day is still that core you're dealing with artists that have amazing talent and you know, Lita, you said it and Jay, you said it too. You know, you learn the difference between the really unbelievably talented people that you end up having the privilege of representing and if you can have a sensitivity to their culture and to their world, you can be a trusted advisor. They're coming into you saying, okay, people are talking to me about production deals or record contracts, what does it mean? Right, you know, I mean, you know, literally, so it's not the most sophisticated business ultimately, you know, the recruitment structures and the waterfall of the royalties, what rights are being granted? But it is, it's stuff that's gonna affect the lives of these kids and they're literally kids, you know, we are walking into your office and so you have to take all of that and synthesize it into a conversation with somebody who doesn't know the answers to the questions, really doesn't know the questions. So how do you feed information to an unsophisticated artist who is unsophisticated in business, but has the talent, you know, to get to their instincts, to get to understand what's important to them and then advise them. How's that for a summary? Okay. All right, we'll pass it over to Lita. What's the day-to-day for your practice being a little bit more litigation focused? Right, so, you know, typically some, a lawyer in my office or a lawyer I'm working with will undoubtedly send me a complaint or a motion or a response to a motion to review and, you know, I'll make whatever edits need to be made and, you know, look at the schedule and see where we are in terms of filing deadlines and all those kinds of things for trying to figure out, you know, jurisdictional issues or where to sue someone or do you have jurisdiction over a record company and, you know, a little town in Massachusetts or, you know, some town in Arkansas, how do you get jurisdiction over a record company or a music publishing company or a Spotify or whomever? If you're looking to serve a subpoena, let's say, to find out. So a lot of things have changed in the digital marketplace. And one of the biggest things is how income is earned for the music industry. And one of the problems or one of the, not even problems but one of the challenges is figuring out how much money a particular song is making or a master. And, you know, someone may call my office and say, you know, someone, you know, sampled my song and didn't pay me and there's, you know, two million views on YouTube. And I have to explain to them, that's about $1,000. Like they think it's millions of dollars. Like they think you got to stop these people or someone will call my office and say, my records are being sold on eBay and I need to get paid. And I have to explain to them the first sale doctrine, right? That you don't get any money when someone resells a copy of your record. So those things are happening. And then the new things are happening too. Like I've gotten about lately five or six NFT deals come across my desk, right? Russell Simmons is doing NFT deals now where he's trying to assign some of kind of a hip hop classic artists and producers to exclusive arrangements to do NFTs. I don't know how familiar the classes or the students are with NFTs, non-fungible things. Not at all, not at all. Okay, so what is in a very short, I don't want to take up too much time on this, but they are a digital, a unique digital file, I guess I would say that contains music or art or something that are being auctioned on the internet. And it's come about largely for fine artists, right? But it supposedly has blockchain programming into backed into the software related to the sale that allows the artist to get money whenever the artwork, the digital token is sold to another person. So let's say the first transaction, someone buys a piece of art for $500 and then three weeks later, that person sells it for $15,000. Well, there's supposed to be a blockchain programming in there that will allow that original artist who made the artwork to get 10, 20, 15% of that new price, which is something very unique and different for fine artists. It's similar to a royalty that recording artists are used to. So Quincy Jones has teamed up with a company and most of these companies interestingly are out of Asia but they're teaming up with people here in the States to try to get access to recording artists. So Quincy Jones is doing that with a company where they're signing artists in kind of a non-exclusive way to sell music. Tori Lane's a familiar hip hop artist now, recently did a limited edition NFT for an album where he sold like 500 copies of the album for $500 a piece, just to give you an example. So new technology stuff is coming in. Then I'm dealing with things regarding the Music Modernization Act. And I will say that on the practitioners and the artists, we were all very unhappy to hear that Harry Fox was gonna come in to try to manage the database for the music because there's a big problem in the music industry with incorrect copyright information, meaning splits, meaning how much of a particular song one publisher or one writer owns versus another. So typically you wanna have that add up to 100% in order to, for all the writers to basically be paid. And but there's a lot of confusion out in the marketplace. There's songs that are registered with the writers listed wrong or listed at wrong percentages and Harry Fox is not really an entity that's gonna help resolve that. So I do some lobbying, obviously that's part of my day-to-day and then also some follow-up on a lot of these issues. And just as an example, so I had a meeting last week with a well-known artist, I won't say the name. And he was in DC for a performance and I went over to his office with my intern, I mean, over to his hotel with my intern to meet with him. And when I got there, I got a text and he went out to buy some sneakers and I waited there for him for an hour and his manager was texting him and I was texting him and et cetera, et cetera. And he never showed up for the meeting. And I say that to say, while artists are incredible people, they're very bright, they're very talented, they can also be very difficult to work with, right? Because they don't have the same business sense that a normal business person would have about things like meetings, being on time, need to sign documents or not sign documents. And I've kind of found in my career, there's three different types of clients who are artists. The first type signs anything that anybody puts in front of them, they don't even ask for a lawyer, they just sign, sign, sign. The second type won't sign anything. They're scared to death, even with the lawyer's advice, they're scared to sign anything. And then you have the third type, which are the ones who kind of weigh the options, talk to a lawyer, make a good decision and do the right thing, right? But I find there's a combination of those three types of clients in general and I'm simplifying this a little bit, but I think it's a good kind of analysis especially for young lawyers who are interested in getting into this space to know that when you're working with creative people, they don't work on the same kind of time schedule and under the same constraints as regular business people and certainly not the way that lawyers and accountants and other types work. Awesome. And then Jay, with your work in GBH with TV, radio, how's that day-to-day change from like Elliot and Lita who are more music focused? But I think in some ways it's the same. First of all, in terms of day-to-day, the one thing I can safely say is generally speaking, I don't do in a day what I plan to do in a day. I have a list of things that I plan to do in the day that's not necessarily what I do in that day. When I first went to a big firm after law school and that it was in Boston, it didn't have an entertainment law department and I made a decision to join the business corporate department because I figured I need to learn how to be that sort of lawyer and I consciously did not go into litigation because I feared that if you're a litigator, those occasional times when you're actually on trial, you're not available to help clients. It's not sort of the background. With hindsight, it would have been useful to have more litigation experience at least, but for the most part, that's not my practice. Largely my practice, it's not only law, sort of like what Elliot said in terms of providing advice and guidance. Our department at GBH is legal in business affairs and there's not really an obvious line sometimes between the difference. The practice as a lawyer, day to day, it's primarily transactional. It's based on understanding rights and copyright and all the other rights and the rights you need to get and how do you get them and all that sort of stuff, but it's largely a transactional practice that's contract-based, negotiating deals and at various stages, pre-production of programs when you're getting the pieces into place, production when you're dealing with production-related issues and then post-production, things come up all along the way. And for the most part, it's a transactional negotiating practice and drafting, reviewing contracts and advising clients about deals. It's in the background constantly, right? That's right, that's right. The IP stuff, this is... That's right, the foundation is the IP, but that's the context. I will say that one other part, one of the other things we do is, and this is not so much fun for the clients, but it's occasionally the fun part for the lawyer is when things go wrong. That's when the issues are different, the adrenaline flows, you're dealing with a major problem that requires immediate resolution. And I like it when I have about 20% or so of my practice, 25% dealing with the excitement and pressure and complications of when things go wrong, hopefully because it means I come to the rescue. But, and so I like having some... If you have too much of that, it's a little bit too much aggravation and if you have not enough of it, life can get a little bit dull. So I like the combination of getting pleasure from doing the good work of lawyering, the craft of lawyering, not quite an art, but the craft of lawyering and the day-to-day basis combined with those occasional situations where things go wrong and now you have to step in and hopefully fix a situation. In my experience, mostly by avoiding litigation. I've had some experience with litigation in private practice and occasionally we've had some experience in GBH, but for the most part, my day-to-day life is spent doing the sorts of stuff that will avoid litigation. That is the hope. I came from Boston as well, Jay. I didn't do that earlier. So I grew up on WGBH, Zoom, Zoom. That's great, that's right. We're doing the 50th anniversary of Zoom and we're dealing with trying to get some rights and some material so that we can make that stuff available. I see because some of those students went to the Elmlewa School of Fine Arts with me there. You're nice. Yeah. That's great. But the elitist example, you talked about NFTs, right? Four months ago, no one was talking about NFTs and then it literally exploded into our world and just one thing implicated all the stakeholders, all the rights holders, everybody all of a sudden is like, holy shit, we got to figure this out, right? So, you know, and you get analytical about this. It's like, okay, yes, there is the gift for where there's the visual image. Yeah, the musical artist who has to collaborate with the visual artist, what's their deal, okay? They, by the way, are they gonna, yeah, this NFT is gonna be minted and distributed by a platform. What's the platform's deal? Then, standing behind the musical artist, let's assume the visual artist is an independent, there's a record company, there's a publishing company, there are band members, there are songwriters, everybody, so all of a sudden, you know, this little thing's like 12 parties coming together and, you know, is it gonna be worth $63 million like that guy or is it gonna be worth nothing? And by the way, it's 15 seconds long, is it gonna interfere with the new single from the artist? So, it's that collision of rights and cutting edge, you know, intellectual property that all of a sudden there was like, I don't know, okay, what are we gonna do? So, you know, that is a classic example. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, no, that's definitely interesting and that will definitely be our next point, but let's move on to Regan and find out what a day-to-day in Spotify is like and even if you can also go into your time in the government too and how that's different, I think that would be a real good idea on how those two differ and maybe are similar at the same time. Sure, I think my experience is probably similar to everyone else where I start my week and I write down the things I wanna get done in the week and then at the end of the week, if I get a third of them, I consider that a total victory, but you've also gotten 8,000 things done in between and so you just take every hour from a creative and flexible viewpoint, but you kinda need to know your IP background and what you're gonna offer and how you're going to advise on a situation really, really well when an issue like you mentioned NFTs pops up, you're able to steer it the right way. So in government, we might be working on a Supreme Court litigation, so the Copyright Office advises the Solicitor General on what they should say, we go to the Supreme Court around the brief, some of that is a lot of research and a lot of history, like a traditional litigation background. There might be a hearing in Congress or congressional inquiries where you're trying to be very impartial and factual but also some sort of suggest what might be the right course to fulfill the overall public objectives but those are going to be emerging issues. I think right now they're studying a publisher, right? And when I was there, there was a lot of questions about music licensing in particular or maybe it is a regulatory work where that's actually when you get down to it, it's a lot like transactional tracking and I think the best layers on my team for actually writing federal code had come out of a transactional or a deal of practice but in order to understand what you want to put down, how you want to represent those who are not at the table, you need to be able to engage with everyone and figure out what's really going on. So Rita mentioned HFA, which is the vendor that the new collective under the Music Modernization Act picked and hired. Now the government couldn't tell them who to hire or not. So I heard from lots of people who are also shared that concern that maybe they wouldn't do this great job. The government can't tell them to fire them, right? But we could put up rules about how the collective needed to perform, what it needed to tell out to people in their royalty statements, sort of suggest targets that should hit so that if it didn't succeed when it came up for like kind of a revoter renewal the way the law is written, maybe it can be measured and maybe there can be some sign as to whether it's really succeeding or not because that is tricky. It was a big success to get that law passed for the music industry and I think a lot of songwriters, creators and publishers hoped it would really work but the truth is, right? The publishers control that relationship and information that they pass on to the songwriters and sort of navigating that and realizing everyone's role in the system was part of a lot of what I worked on over the last couple of years where you need to know the copyright law really, really well but also be able to understand what people are, what their business interests are and think about a way to make a compromise that's going to satisfy everyone's needs as much as you can to try to like maximize efficiency. So Spotify, it's kind of similar, right? We are in a moment of big conversations about allocations of royalties coming out. So right now we're at the music industry has come back up to a high point sort of record money coming in from right from the distributor's perspective they're still taking the same 30% or whatever that the record store used to take. And when I was a record store clerk in college like that seemed people said, that's cool, right? But there's conversations because the well the pie has gotten bigger overall it sort of shifted who's getting paid how they're getting paid how the malls I was streaming so I might think about that or think about today when I woke up the United Kingdom had announced they were starting a competition inquiry through their sort of antitrust regulator into actions of the major labels. I spent a lot of time working on that but had I known that was gonna be my day was going to be no but it's similar in that I would bring to bear my background knowledge and be able to quickly react and also deal with things that come up that are not expected such as I think social media regulation and content regulation is really, really hot right now for good reasons and it's not necessarily driven by the music industry but the same type of law that might regulate certain content on Facebook would also regulate the ability to recommend if you'd like listening to this you might like listening to that which has consumer implications marketing implications and business implications for platforms so you have to be kind of ready to quickly to react to involving front. Awesome. That's kind of incredible and just using the one example that Reagan used there about in the UK there is a lot in particular there's a lot of antitrust anti-competitive action discussions going on and there's one proposal saying and again I don't know how familiar you guys are with sound exchange so like Sirius XM radio here satellite digital radio there's now big money that gets paid to the artists for use of the master recordings and satellite and that money goes directly from Sirius to the sound exchange organization it gets divided at that source some goes into a fund but basically half to the artist and half to the label so literally half of that income has gone away there is now this potential discussion in the UK which says let's do the same thing with streaming okay so let's have Spotify and its brethren pay a sound exchange type organization and literally half of that income would go directly to the artist that would have massive impact on deal structures because the record companies are used to collecting 100% of that income no matter how much they ultimately apply to the artist account if they lose control of that income it's going to have a huge effect on advances and deal structures so that's a great example of how governmental action and IP law impacts our day to day reality one of the things that people need to be clear and for some of us it's easy but I've been a professor at Berkeley Berkeley College of Music for a long time and one of the biggest hurdles is for the students to really come to understand the difference between rights and songs and musical compositions as compared to rights and sound recordings there's the record business or at least what used to be called the record business that's based on having rights and sound recordings and traditionally record labels and recording artists would share that pie and then there's the separate source of income based on rights and songs and compositions what's generally understood as the music publishing business but when you're trying to understand all of this as you get down to it it's going to become fundamentally important to recognize those at least in the music world those different parts of the business which are based on two separate bundles of rights sometimes owned or controlled by the same party but sometimes not and just if I could give a quick example I've been teaching a class called the business of music to undergraduate students in the music department at the University of the District of Columbia for a long time and when I get to that issue Jay what I tell them is I go to another studio and record my version of Michael Jackson's song Thriller me singing Thriller with the producer let's say Jay is the producer okay Jay and I would own the copyrights in my version of Thriller but everybody knows that we didn't write Thriller right so the song Thriller the original writers and publishers of Thriller still maintain their ownership of the actual song itself so the master recording or the rendition of a song by an artist on a record is a separate copyrightable work separate and distinct from the song itself which is also entitled to copyright protection thank you all you know I'd love to to follow a thread that I heard over the multiple questions and that is a Lita you mentioned about having to wait for a client to buy sneakers and then in show up Elliott you mentioned sales and cheery negotiations and so I want to just see if everyone could could talk a bit about advice on negotiating with opposing counsel are there any illustrative stories perhaps you know when to call when not to call when to push when to give is it always collegial maybe not so it's certainly not always collegial although we hope to always still be good colleagues in the end of any negotiation I would say for lawyers there's a certain respect that we're supposed to have for each other when we're on opposing sides whether it's litigation or transactional work and sometimes that is in fact what happens and sometimes it does get a little personal and but you try to maintain the professionalism there I think but to kind of round it out I guess I would say that one of the important things so what I got from Wall Street was a lot of skills in negotiation to be quite frank in contract drafting and there's a certain psychology that's involved in negotiations in contract drafting right so what I tell my students and what I do generally is I always make sure that in the beginning of the contract whoever I'm sending the contract to sees what they're getting out of the contract and then in the second half of it what my client or I want out of the contract because sometimes if you put what you want up front they'll say no no no no no before they even get to the rest of the contract to find out what it is they're getting the other thing is learning how to horse trade and this is something that lawyers skills that lawyers develop over time so you don't let someone one off you right so you send someone a contract let's say a producer agreement and it's got a producer fee of $10,000 and three royalty points and you know a couple of other things and the lawyer calls you up right away and says hey my client can't do they've got to have $20,000 to do this song so my response to that is well you know what send me back all of your comments on the contract and I'll take that to my client don't let them pick off issues and get you to agree to give something without getting anything in return right so it's a really important skill it's important skill for a lawyer whether you're a litigator or a transactional lawyer right don't let the other side pick you pick out issues and get you to agree things without considering the entire negotiation and what does this mean in the context of the entire negotiation so I might come back and say well I talked to my client I saw your other comments and will agree to give you $20,000 if you agree to do these six things I was going to say something cute like damn she's on to me but but yeah there's a million different ways to say it and particularly those of us on the transactional side we are tied together in this complicated dance you know it when things fell out when the bottom fell out it was rough times right so you're protecting your clients the record companies were and the publishers were desperately trying to figure out how they're going to transition and transitioning a business model to another business model you know somebody else may come up with something more difficult but that's right at the top of the list so you are a healthy ecosystem it's important to everybody that participates when it's out of balance when there's exploitative behavior I mean I think we that's when you really start to get into a lot of crazy stuff and you know we do see a lot of those independent production deals where some kids signed it on the hood of a car or while waiting online at a sneaker store you know I just committed my entire life they had no idea you know we work really hard to try and give people perspective their gifts and takes and you want to try and get to a decent balance in that and listen record companies invest you know and if you sign to a record company when it really is the cornerstone investment in their career they're going to get a lot more okay so do you you know I don't tell people not to do business with major labels but I say if you have a smart manager or you just have smart manager of your own don't go too soon because then you're going to be giving up too many rights and not getting enough money and not getting a fair enough deal no matter what as a baby artist you're not going to get a superstar deal but if you can start to put it in perspective for where if your career keeps growing you know these are the horizons this is where hopefully you can go assuming you don't get sidetracked with litigation problems and everything else yeah I think I think it's also important to appreciate though as lawyers that you know we get contracts across our desk and you know we evaluate the contract compared to other contracts for similar types of deals that we see but I think it's important to know the distinction between a business decision and a legal decision so ultimately it's the client's decision as to whether or not they want to do the deal and a lot of times the clients will say to me well should I do this I shouldn't I and I'll tell them look this are these are the legal issues that I see but ultimately this is your decision because I'm not a record label I don't have another deal to offer you so if you walk away from this deal I can't guarantee you that there's going to be another deal that comes your way so I've seen situations where people have signed really bad deals and just as an example I think I can say this publicly I did some representation for PRAS from the Fuji's and PRAS actually told me that he and Lauren Hill and Wycliffe were in the studio in New Jersey recording and they were young you know un-signed artists trying to you know do their thing and the owner of the recording studio wanted to sign them to a contract a production deal or like a seven album deal or some such thing and it would look like a terrible deal no money up front nothing nothing but PRAS said to me if I haven't signed that deal I wouldn't be here today and nobody in the world would know who I am so I'm saying that to say you have to put things into perspective right for your clients while you know talent is not necessarily the driving force between success and the music business I would say it sustain it can sustain you but it's not necessarily what pushes you over the edge right and in the music business that's typically a hit record in the TV and film business that's a hit TV show and I'm not a judge of that so when someone walks in my office I don't judge them I don't judge how good looking they are how well I think they can sing or rap or anything else I evaluate them as being a client based upon whether or not I think they can pay my fees and if they can pay my fees then I can represent them right and pay my fees I don't mean their parents are taking out a mortgage on their house in order to support their kid being in music because that's not what I mean I mean that there's real possibility and chance of them having success so they're already happening on the internet some things already happening they're bubbling up on the internet or a manager who already has artists signed to major labels and have hit records out wants to sign them right or a TV production company that already has a deal with free mantle and you know XYZ wants to you know do a deal with a client so for me being a solo practitioner having a small firm that's how I judge who I'm going to take on as a client and and Jay or Regan do you want to chime in on Regan you want to go first should I I'll just say real quick I think one because I did start in film one thing I have like approached lawyering an IP in particular is thinking that I have a zoom lens because I did start out working with talent before law school too and I agree that you want to make there's a lot of emotions there's a lot of personality and then particularly in government then you have a lot of politics but I think being able to see the big picture on whatever the issue is whether it is a deal whether it's a policy conversation whether it is a compromise to work out as a regulator going in and being able to see what the terms actually say with the law actually says reading the statute can honestly sort of say like hey you know what it doesn't have to be zero sum here then you can quickly zoom back out you don't want to get tied up in the weeds you don't want to bore people your client doesn't necessarily want to hear that or the business doesn't want to hear that or the congressman doesn't want to hear that but that's what you can do as a lawyer is zoom in and out and help translate that conversation so that's a little bit of a carrot but that is something that I thought has served me well no matter what I was working on thanks I'll add just a few thoughts about you know to some extent negotiation is the fun part of the job that's easy you're talking you're talking on the phone or on a zoom as compared to you know the hard work of drafting and revising and taking the zoom lens and not only that when you're using the zoom lens you can imagine every scenario that might happen in the future and to make sure that the deal you're doing anticipates all of those possibilities and protects for them in terms of negotiation itself you know I mostly and there are exceptions to all these rules but I mostly think about it as both sides trying to understand and address the reasonable concerns of the other side making sure of course that you're addressing your reasonable concerns as well sometimes that's a matter of mastering the art of listening which is a little bit you think about negotiating and how do you get what you want but largely that's a matter of listening and understanding carefully not only what your clients interests are but what are the interests of the other side sometimes you can't depend on them you can't figure it out for them and you gotta educate them and you gotta whatever you need to do in order to help them understand that what you want is in their best interest not last for 10 minutes come on that's good awesome and then I'd like to move to the last obviously it would not be a law school panel if it wasn't to give us ideas what our next steps should be classes we should take maybe what type of opportunities we should be looking for right when we get out of law school and kind of the approach we should look to break out into the space of IP because personally with me looking at IP you see all these large law firms and you don't see a lot of small law firms doing intellectual property especially copyright like this so I think it would be really interesting to get all of your takes on how we can create a plan or kind of look at our futures on how to plan something on how to really approach to breaking out into the IP space so for this question I'd like Regan if you'd like to start off yeah I was thinking about that I sort of reflecting on this panel that my job now is kind of like exactly what I've studied in college you know how people say like you don't use your college major but I was studying international relations and aesthetics and like taking film classes I feel like it's kind of the same you know Vayne I'm actually working in it and I think that the way that happens is you have to take whatever the opportunity that's presented to you take it and make the most of it so you know I litigated Pat and they said oh you can argue the jury you can argue up in court at the first year and I was like I want to be an entertainment transactional lawyer but like okay I'm going to see that and I'm going to go with that and I didn't end up a patent lawyer for my whole life but that was a valuable learning experience for me so I would take whatever falls on your plate when you're starting out but I would also stay really focused on what you want to achieve in your career and don't get thrown off that so I would join the Bar Association I would signal the interest if you're at a larger firm I would network and do that and eventually when you've developed your lawyer skills I think the community will meet you and you will find your own place in that and I think a lot of people there's many different ways but I think that's kind of a common theme they have is both determination as well as building the chops so when their moment comes to focus on that area they have it and you know as far as like should you join the firm or not join the firm you know I started at Kirkland Alice it's a very big firm it was very good training did I want to spend my whole career there no but was it worth it a thing probably yes so that's not the only way to make your legal path but I guess I do recommend it because I do think the training is very good I'd be interested in your perceptions Lita, Jay, Regan we all started out at big firms you know and then you move to more boutique practice right if you're a very lack of a better phrase is that still the model do the big firms hire you know as much as they used to or is there a way to get past it now I don't know why don't you tell us Elliot when you're hiring an associate are you hiring someone that hasn't already been trained to be a lawyer at a firm that might have had all the resources that do it because my impression is you know and I tell my people you know Berkeley students who go to law school they remember them and they want to do this and most of the time I say first you got to be a lawyer you got to become a lawyer you got to learn how to be a lawyer preferably working with good people finding the mentors avoiding the opposite of the mentors and and that's what there's many paths I know people who became entertainment lawyers starting off solo practitioner and then they ended up doing a practice and then joined the firm my impression is though that that the boutique entertainment law firms are for the most part not hiring people right out of law school that they're hiring people who've been trained to be lawyers you know at larger firms and so if the goal is to be an entertainment lawyer I would say don't limit your search when you're at a law school to trying to find a job that does just that but focus your search on getting a good job with the sorts of lawyers who you can trust and respect and learn what is it what is it to be a good lawyer and what's the difference between the lawyer you want to be and the lawyer you don't want to be certainly my preference when looking at candidates right it makes me nervous actually if somebody hasn't had some experience along those lines but I'm finding less crossover I'm finding more kids we want to get into the business more directly you know and I don't know what the impact that's going to be in the long run but definitely and we talk about entertainment lawyers and so but look at this group that you have here incredibly diverse and Jordan Jeff did a great job but we're all entertainment lawyers but I'm not a film and TV lawyer really I mean you know we work touches on those zones but you know I have these things that are specialists in that I do a lot of music work for Broadway and I've been lucky enough to work with great Broadway lawyers who then look to me for my music expertise but I'm definitely not a Broadway lawyer you need an entire you know career just to learn the nuances of those deals so you know for me passion right so you know if you want to be a music lawyer focus on that if you want to be a film and TV lawyer if you want to go into the government you know focus on that and then try to find a job with a firm that's going to help you develop those skills I think so I would say similar to what Regan said that you know I talk to a lot of young people that want to be entertainment lawyers and I always tell them remember that's your long-term goal so don't be upset if coming out of school at Spotify or working for Gretman and Dursky or wherever because it's a long-term goal and you really need to develop yourself as a lawyer and you take in my opinion and you know I'm kind of old school conservative but you take the job that you get right to me you don't turn down a job when you're coming out of law school because it's not in the field that you want to be in you take that job and then you try to directionalize your career you start you know joining the bar association you know entertainment law section or IP law section and try to network and meet people and try to figure out how to translate the skills that you're getting whether they're litigation or family law I mean there's a place for all of that somewhere in entertainment and a door will open for you to get to where you want to be right so that's kind of what my advice would be and it's really important just to be a good lawyer right and I found that all of my experiences from you know going to the Almalua School of Fine Arts when I was in junior high and high school to be in a journalism a communications major and undergrad and then working on Wall Street all of those things in one way or another contributed to me being the lawyer that I am today and having the skill set that I have so I think it's important to focus in and also define entertainment broadly I mean or IP law broadly because I'm not sure but I would think that someone who wants to be an entertainment lawyer would not be unhappy if they got a job at you know Moderna who did the vaccine right a biotech firm I don't think you'd be too unhappy if you had a job there right so I think we have to define things broadly there are very small number of boutique entertainment law firms and Ali it's absolutely right or Jay I forget who said it that they're looking for people to come in that already have a skill set right so maybe four years out five years out of school where you already have skills you might not be an expert in entertainment but you know how to draft a contract you know what defined terms are understand how to negotiate you have that basic skill set and then you can learn the rest go to the CLEs stay on top of the new issues join the ABA entertainment IP law section entertainment section do all of those things and you will end up where you want to be yeah don't get distracted yeah yeah because there's so many distractions along the way but if you have that passion you will get there that's always been my belief you know you know I used to drop resumes in front of people going oh what's that you know I have these CLE things you know you just gotta keep doing it and the business changes so much with this constantly need for fresh talent you know in legal business one thing to mention not to go unmentioned is you know if you want to be an entertainment lawyer you gotta get a client you know that's how you get the practice and that's how you get the experience you know what's an entertainment lawyer it's a lawyer that has entertainers as clients there's a wide range of work that sometimes they need some of which you may specialize in and some of which you might have colleagues or others to step in but you know the trick is to get you know you get clients one way or another there's a time-odder tradition for service lawyers and service partners and I could not sit here and relax on this call with you guys if I didn't know there were a few people down there you know working on some contracts but yes particularly if you get into a transactional practice or an independent litigation practice as opposed to a big firm you go to these big trademark firms we call on them and rely on them but if you're in the contract business I knew Jay back when Jay knew me when I had my first successful client was living color I don't know if anybody remembers culture personality I mean man and that was one of those songs in one of those bands that kind of changed the world and all of a sudden I was that that guy you know over there you know too wow he's got a hit act you know we went one thing leads to another yeah that's what it does it in the music industry Elliott I mean you hit the nail on the head because we don't get clients we get clients by word of mouth by one entertainer or artist or whomever recommending us or saying hey call my lawyer did this or did that right and in some ways that's good and in other ways it's not good because sometimes those creative people really don't have a basis to choose a lawyer they don't really have any idea what they're supposed to be looking for in a lawyer right and somebody else says this is a good idea somebody else says this is a good this is who you should hire but that's not relationships sorry sorry I think relationships is a key word because you know there's a long tail to this practice and what goes around comes around in terms of who you know and how you deal with them so yeah and your reputation is everything you know there are some people my firm is the classic example Michael Guido has been Jay-Z's lawyer since his first single deal which by the way sucked in 1995 all the changes is that and so we did our time with Kanye and so then Kid Cuddy and Megan Thee Stallion and then some kids walk in the office and go well yeah I represent Dave Matthews and they're like yeah I think my father used to like that and he just go oh my god you know it's like you know so but it's relationships and different lines of music and culture you know and so you just establish if you have a good reputation there's nothing better than when you know an artist refers you to somebody else or their manager goes yeah yeah yeah call it you know I have young guys who you know gals who work for us who you know we're just back up on things and now they're getting calls from the junior people on those deals you know it's like really you know just do good work you know is really the best if I could make a suggestion like if you're not if you're trying to get just on that first run is I spent a lot of time working with volunteer lawyers for the arts DLA type groups and I thought that was great training for you as a lawyer maybe you can learn some type of lawyering that is not your day to day but you can you can do that very appreciative and I think a lot of time yeah a lot of times you're also working with entertainers of artists that you know they're going to break out they're going to make your way themselves so you can practice you are really contributing and going together so I think I highly recommend getting involved in your VLA just as you would for the bar association and putting in that time yeah and you can get real experience doing that too that's the other good thing awesome that that oh man this has been an amazing panel we are getting to the end but I would like to open it up to if anyone has particular questions I don't want to hog all of them with me and Jeff so if ever if anyone has a question just I'd like you to speak up and ask the panel for these last 15 minutes if not I got plenty more yeah I got a question and I think it's more pointed to miss Mr. Zario I was really intrigued by your talking about now like lately you've been seeing NFTs coming onto your desk about more to do with music and everything and I know Mr. Graffman was talking about you know the amount of people come together to kind of make sense in a law aspect with NFTs but do you do you guys see it getting more easier more complicated as like this basic spans for IP lawyers and NFTs well I mean I think it's certainly it's a new area it's certainly developing you know so for artists who are signed to major labels it's a lot more difficult for artists who are not signed to major labels meaning that they've already had a career and their major label deal is over it's a lot for them to do the NFTs because they don't need to get a bunch of approvals from third parties they can create a new song with the producer and have them agree to all the rights that they need in the producer agreement and kind of move forward in that way so it kind of just depends but I definitely see it as a developing field for sure there's a lot of different legal issues we've yet I haven't seen any litigation yet Elliot I don't know if you have but there's you know there's going to be some litigations at some point there's going to be a litigation that's going to help define some of the applicability of like the first sale doctrine and other things like that to NFTs and there's also trademark issues that could come up so you know it's definitely a developing field and a great area to write a paper on if you're a law student or you know it's a great area to kind of familiarize yourself with and like I said these companies are popping up most of them are based in Asia like the platforms where they're like option online option houses a lot of them are coming out of Asia Singapore and even Australia one of the deals I did is Australia I just did another deal for it with a company that raised I don't know a hundred million dollars or something in a joint venture fund to do NFTs in the music in the dance music area so I mean it's it's certainly developing and I think you know as time goes on and as things play out we're going to see some more of the issues evolving so I mean I think it's going to just get more and more interesting great thank you any other questions alright looks like I'm up to that this one will be pointed toward a Reagan you said you did patent work I think that's something that we've normally been talking about copyright and I know that there are a few students that are definitely interested in patent work can you just go briefly and kind of expound upon that on on that type of subject and how that work kind of goes yeah so patent work if you have a science background which means you can file them before the PCO so I didn't but I was a litigator and my case went to trial as a first year it was really interesting because the case ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court on the issue I was tasked on which was I think a surprise to everybody but the main issue in that was about now we're in like the 5G band of cellular technology but this was about 3G or 2G and what the standards were for that and whether that could be controlled it was similar to copyright I think patent and copyright are somewhat similar in that they're very doctrinal like you kind of got to get into the weeds versus trademark or the very clear standard then you have your seven factor test and it has a lot of exciting facts and whether you like put those puzzles together in the trademark context from a factual element or whether you like to get into here's what's really going on you have been the dirty rotten printer you haven't or figure out a deal structure from that in my view patent and copyright are more similar than trademark but trademark is sometimes even more fun I've done all of them as well as false advertising which also comes in under the Lanamax so there's definitely a business there in filing and securing trademark portfolio protection patent protection copyright protection as well as a lot of licensing agreements or maybe ways to both offensive and defensive make sure that a company is appropriately for whatever they want to do if they want to launch a new business line or product counseling type work or if they want to secure what makes them special so they can block out competitors so I have always said you know I'm like the philosophy major who's like well you've got their own living somehow like don't be afraid to dig in even if you don't have a scientific background like you know if it's interesting to you you can figure out learn it and I think good learning will still carry the day but it's definitely those cases are a lot bigger usually not all the time but the interesting ones are a lot bigger legal cases really really interesting small things so yeah trademark is really small so I just like to jump in and say thank you all for attending thank you for the panelists I'd like for each of the panelists to just give in our last eight minutes just two minutes jumping off of something Jay said he said you got to know the difference between good and bad lawyering so maybe using that as a jump off just give us two two minutes of what it means to be a good lawyer and thank you all again and again if you want the recording you can go to jpaplag.rwu.edu okay Jay take it out since you know you got your finger on the pulse well what does it mean to be a good lawyer well you know it it means knowing what you need to know knowing what you don't know that you need to know that's right it means you know being sympathetic to the you know and curious of the interests of not only the people you represent but the general context in which they're operating and the people who you're dealing with on the other side because you need to understand where they're coming from in order to effectively negotiate deals drafting you know is hard work you know and and you know I've trained lots of lawyers over the years young lawyers have worked with me and you know it's not easy to keep writing and to keep thinking until you get it so that you feel like you know you're there I wouldn't call it an art but there is a craft there and that's you know that's you know when you talk about Elliott a rock and roll lawyer you know it's not all a bit sexy you know when you're in your office at eight o'clock at night and you're drafting and Reagan you and your folks are drafting the legislation I mean this is hard work you know and you know so I think it's a matter of you know dealing with others with integrity you know and and I would say that many you know many of the people who I've started out negotiating with deals with on the other side have become friends not all of them you know but it's not unusual that you know that my friends in the business are people who I've met when I've negotiated deals on the other side and that's based not only hopefully on the respect they have for you in terms of the quality of your work but it's also the respect they have for you in terms of the kind of person you are I mean and it's different research and writing right means something different you know in governmental work and litigation work then it does mean contract work but you know it's incredibly important be you have to be incredibly thorough and that doesn't mean we tend to be in a forum's business oh here's the recording agreement gee what did they give this one the last one but I also make a real point of making sure that you know here draft you know let's make this up we're just doing a singles deal with somebody and give one to the younger lawyers something to draft from scratch hardest thing in the world to do right you know just get somebody to do something that hasn't been done in a forum before and then we and again just finishing our theme of the differences in our styles of practice you know we are a business firm right our core competency is the legal work you're in your role with the personal manager the business manager the accountants you know the booking agents etc etc they're looking to you but you need to understand the business that you're in I am not a math genius I see in fact I do regret not really learning more about finance real finance when I was in college and then law school but I know I know the economics of our business and when the business you know move so much and transform you have to say on top of that so that when somebody says to you is this a good deal you know you can say yes or no or here you know the all the following reasons for where you are in your career because we work with artists in every way you have to have the perspective you have to be thorough so you learn your learn your business learn your skills now there you go well I guess I would say to follow up on Jay for sure you should become an expert in the area that you intend to work in developing that expertise is critical and you should also know what you don't know right so that if you need to go get help or you need to do additional research or whatever that you're aware that you can do that because particularly in the music space with contracts that can affect a client for their entire career it's really important to know what you're doing and I've seen young lawyers go out and throw out a shingle right away and try to be a music lawyer and end up really doing some terrible deals for clients just because they don't know what they're doing or they want to get into the video shoot scene or want to be in the studio I found for me as a woman in particular that I stay away from those places because your clients can sometimes lose respect for you if they're seeing you in those social settings and particularly if you're hanging around too long you start to be like a groupie so while we want to do this type of law because it's exciting and you want to be around the artistic people I think you have to stay cognizant of the fact that you need to keep your professional distance and to establish your professionalism with your clients early on so that it doesn't get confused and I would also say that if you are starting out and you want to start your own firm it's probably not realistic unless you're walking in the door with a client already that's going to pay your bills to be able to pay your bills on entertainment law so you might have to practice criminal law or real property law or real estate law or whatever in order to pay your bills while you try to develop your entertainment practice right if you're going to kind of go out there early on or after only working somewhere for two years or something and you want to kind of throw out a shingle you got to be realistic about what opportunities will be there for you to pay your bills and the other thing is you can't let a client take up all of your time so lawyers like managers and kind of the music space a client will take up all we have to sell is our time and our knowledge what's in our heads so a client will take up all your time especially a client that's trying to get into the industry and you're their only hook to thinking that they have a way they will try to take up all of your time and you cannot allow them to do that you just can't allow them to do that you got to know where to cut it off and you've got to have more clients because if you have 10 clients the likelihood that one of them is going to have a hit record is much greater than if you only have a client and then I also had to learn like I mentioned before I don't take the clients their parents are taking out an equity loan on their home to build a studio because their son wants to be in the music business I don't take those clients I learn not to take them I say that's where my own personal I guess values come into play but I don't think that's a wise thing to do and so I don't try to support someone who's doing that it's different if they got a boatload of money and it doesn't really matter that's a different situation they can take the risk they can take the losses on their income taxes and you know there's a way to resolve that and I talked to them about that and about getting advice on how to do that but you know so I've learned how to what to expect from a client and how which clients to take so I might do a consultation you know a paid consultation with a client and say once you get to another level you can come back to me I might keep the lines of communication open but I'm not going to take on a bunch of clients that don't really have the ability to pay me and not have a lot of likelihood of having success thank you all so much Reagan final words what's a good lawyer all right I'll keep it real quick because you just got a lot of really great tips from everybody I would say here's three things to keep in mind you want to focus on having good judgment for all the reasons everyone said build that out build out your knowledge so you want to have judgment you want to have your integrity because your relationships and trust are what matters no matter what field of law you end up in that is going to follow you and that is going to be crucial to having a successful career and then you want to focus on quality I think you've got good advice like don't be sloppy don't cut too much corners figure out how to spend your time wisely so make sure you deliver your clients quality thank you so much thank you again thank you for torn thank you for all for attending thank you to the panelists again if you'd like a copy of the recording email me at ipla g.rw.edu or join Iplo if you'd like and for everyone here as Elliott started out the programming pink Cadillacs for everyone who needs royalties thank you all and good night thank you thank you guys very very much thank you thank you thank you