Areas of Practice

Dealmaking

 

Negotiate all varieties of agreements, whether your project is being commissioned as a work for hire, or you’re licensing your project to a distributor, or you’re being hired as an executive producer, or you’re engaging in development or financing activity.

Production Legal

 

Handle releases, above-the-line deals, access agreements, and all other legal elements necessary for production. Advise regarding newsgathering issues relevant to nonfiction filmmakers.

Fair Use/ Defamation Review

 

Advise in relation to tricky fair use, privacy, defamation, and other clearance issues in your scripted and unscripted storytelling. Provide opinion letters for E&O purposes.

Streaming/ International

 

Provide guidance to filmmakers trying to navigate streamers’ deal structures, as well as the clearance complications that often arise from global distribution.

Rights Acquisition

 

Assist with obtaining the underlying rights for your projects, be it the right to make a French version of a Japanese television series, or the life rights for an authorized biopic, or the right to make a nonfiction podcast inspired by a magazine article. (Just as importantly, advise when you don’t actually need to spend money for rights at all.)