Toby\’s blog

Interested in Sports and Entertainment Law? Care to find out how to pursue it? Clinical Professor Peter Carfagna is your man. In addition to his post here at HLS, he counsels clients in the areas of litigation, government relations, and complex business transactions. He also served as General Counsel of IMG for over ten years. This spring, he’s teaching Sports and Law: Representing the Professional Athlete. We caught up with Professor Carfagna recently to get learn more about the Sports Law Clinic.

What is the Sports Law Clinic here at HLS?

The Sports Law Clinic at HLS selects students who have taken either the beginning or intermediate Sports Law courses I offer and places them into “real life” sport law settings where they can experience the day-to-day challenges that sports lawyers face. In particular, this year’s placements included the following: The Boston Celtics and the Boston Red Sox; the Cleveland Browns and the Chicago Bears; the Skadden Arps and Shearman & Sterling law firms where sports lawyers at those firms supervise the externs’ assignments; the IMG Legal Department, which I used to supervise for 10+ years as Chief Legal Officer; the Seattle Mariners Legal Department; the Major League Baseball New York headquarters Legal Department; and other placements in sports law firms and legal departments.

The goal of the externship placement is to allow the HLS student to springboard from his/her Sports Law classes at HLS into a real life experience where his/her knowledge of sports law will make the student an immediate asset to the practitioners whose projects I also supervise while acting as a Visiting Lecturer at HLS.

What kinds of work are students responsible for and what projects have you done?

The project primarily includes contract drafting, legal research and memoranda writing; interaction with the supervising attorney and his clients, as well as assistance in handling episodic legal issues that arise in the areas of contract law, intellectual property law, antitrust law, and general corporate/commercial negotiations and pre-litigation settings.

You often hear how difficult it is for students interested in Sports and Entertainment Law to break through into the industry. How true is this and what advice would you give to any student facing this challenge?

The best way to break into the sports law industry is to be placed as an HLS clinical extern/intern! Seriously, the best way to earn a permanent position is to work for a sports law department or a law firm that practices sports law, and to do an outstanding job. Hopefully, after the intern satisfies his supervisors that he can be a “value add” to the sports law work that is already being done by the Legal Department for the law firm, a permanent offer will be made – if not upon graduation, then perhaps later on in the student intern’s legal career.

What do you think is the most unique aspect of the Sports Law Clinic and why?

The most unique aspect is that success in a Sports Law clinical experience requires a combination of background knowledge in a variety of legal disciplines. As described above, it includes the ability to prepare first drafts of various types of sponsorship and customer-related contracts and other legal documents. In particular, the precision required for contract drafting in the sports law area is emphasized at HLS for this very reason, so that the students can “hit the ground running” when asked to prepare a first-draft of a sponsorship agreement, for example, at the beginning of the student’s internship experience.

…Stephanie Robinson. You probably thought I was going to say Barack Obama. But there’s a more imminent election to replace Tavis Smiley as commentator on the Tom Joyner Morning Show. Stephanie is a lecturer here at Harvard Law School as well as an HLS alumna and the CEO of the Jamestown Project.

Thanks to Professor Ron Sullivan for the heads up on this!

Sometimes Hollywood finds its way to us (The Paper Chase or Legally Blonde, anyone?) and sometimes we find our way to Hollywood. Or at least our alumni do. Take Zola Mashariki ’97 for instance. A Vice President of Production at Fox Searchlight Pictures, her credits to date include The Namesake, Phat Girls, and Antwone Fisher. Before transitioning into the limelight, er “searchlight”, Mashariki worked as a corporate attorney for Proskauer Rose, LLP in New York. She began her tenure at Fox Searchlight in 2000 as a production intern, was promoted to Creative Executive in January 2001, and to Director in November 2003.

“While I loved corporate law, my background in college had been drama and I was still yearning to do something creative. I just couldn’t invest the energy at the time” Mashariki said. Heeding her passion, she headed out to Los Angeles where she enrolled in the Peter Stark Producing Program. “[While different from what I expected], I did learn about production. I was shooting, editing, splicing, and cutting sound the old fashioned way,” she said. “As an intern, I realized that producing is about anticipating everything that can go wrong and working against it.” In what she dubbed a “sink or swim” environment, Mashariki became a “highly underpaid” executive.

“My job became networking… I looked at relationships I had with folks on the outside.” What relationships did she have? From her days growing up in Brooklyn, Mashariki knew Jay-Z, Tupac, and Ice Cube. Her next project, in fact, is The Notorious B.I.G., the story of the life and death of infamous hip hop rapper Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G.

When asked by one student how viable Mashariki’s path was for other law students to follow, she encouraged him to decide what it was he wanted to try, embrace every “menial” task and be prepared to lose his ego. “In the end, it’s all about getting the creative result you want… it’s about negotiating your wants and trying to achieve a common ground. And you’re at HLS, what better preparation could you ask for?”

Founded in 1998, the Recording Artists Project (RAP) focuses on entertainment law issues. RAP provides legal assistance to music artists, independent record labels, production companies, songwriters, film companies, artist managers and other arts and entertainment entrepreneurs and firms. Recently, the Executive Director of RAP, 2L Jennifer Johnson-Blalock sat down for a Q&A to share some insight.

What is RAP?

The Recording Artists Project (RAP) was founded nearly ten years ago to provide pro bono counsel to Boston-area recording artists. RAP functions as both a clinical through the Legal Services Center and as a student organization, allowing students maximum flexibility with their involvement. Within the organization, students work in teams, with the help of our dedicated supervisor, Brian Price, to solve the legal problems of local musicians. These issues are incredibly varied; RAP works on recording contracts, management and agency agreements, licensing, copyright and trademark issues, business formation–basically whatever the client needs.

How did you get involved and why?

I’ve always been committed to arts and entertainment; in college, I worked in publishing and journalism. I decided to go to law school because I wanted to be more on the business, rather than the creative, side of the industry. So I came to HLS knowing that I wanted to work in entertainment law, and I sought out those organizations that would allow me to get experience. I joined the Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law, the Arts and Literature Law Society, and, of course, the Recording Artists Project.

I served as a team leader during my first year in RAP, working with a fantastic band throughout the year on both a management and an agency contract. This year, I’m the Director of the organization. I’m still involved with clients–last semester, I worked on a cybersquatting case and a studio rental contract, and I’m currently going over a licensing agreement. But as the Director, I also coordinate member and client recruitment. I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to play a greater role in the organization and help ensure its continued presence at HLS.

How has the organization evolved over time?

When RAP first started, it was a very collaborative organization, frequently working with the Berkman Center and other student groups like the Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law. I think that over the years, RAP has started to focus more exclusively on client work. Though the actual legal work is definitely the heart of the organization, this approach can be somewhat isolating, only giving students the opportunity to interact with their team members. This year, we’re trying to turn RAP into more of a community that helps its members explore our shared interests. We’re holding regular meetings to discuss the different cases we’re working on, which gives the members a much broader view of the range of legal work. We’re also planning on using these meetings to explore the music industry more generally by discussing current developments and bringing in speakers. We want RAP to be a place where students who are interested in entertainment law have the opportunity to interact with like-minded people and really learn from each other.

What are your plans this summer? Did your involvement in RAP
influence this decision?

This summer I’ll be working at Irell & Manella, a law firm in Los Angeles. They’re incredibly strong in the entertainment sector, both in litigation and transactional work, which is what I hope to focus on. RAP has solidified my desire to work in entertainment, and it’s also made it possible. Jobs in this field are extremely competitive, partially because it’s viewed as a glamorous area of the law and partially because a lot of work is done at the boutique level. Everyone I talked to during OCI was very enthusiastic about my work with RAP. I think it gave me a huge boost because it showed that I was dedicated, and it’s also given me practical experience. In terms of both personal fulfillment and professional success, RAP is the best thing I’ve done so far at HLS.

I just got this in my inbox and it looked interesting — my classmate Adam Hootnick ‘01 is one of the presenters:

Event: TAKING THE PLUNGE: How to Dive into a Dream Career in the Arts

Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Time: 6:00–7:30 p.m.

Location: Pound Hall 335, Harvard Law School

A Panel Discussion sponsored by the HLS Law and the Arts Initiative

The Panel

Viola Canales ‘89 – Author of Orange Candy Slices and Other Secret Tales and The Tequila Worm, winner of the 2006 Pura Belpré Medal for Narrative

Adam Hootnick ‘01 – Director and producer of Unsettled, former producer at MTV News & Docs for politics and international affairs

David Zippel ‘79 – Tony Award winning lyricist for City of Angels, two time Academy Award Nominee, two time Grammy nominee, and three time Golden Globe nominee

Moderator

Harvey Silverglate ‘67, Prominent criminal defense and civil liberties litigator; journalist publishing in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and The Los Angeles Times; author of the forthcoming Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent

The HLS Law and Arts Initiative is a collaborative venture involving students, alumni, faculty, HLS career services and other members of the community interested in the widest possible array of intersections between law and the arts. Please join us and let us know what you are doing!

For more information, check www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/jhalley/lawandarts.

Saw this on the Record’s online page — it’s a write-up of a session where Professor Jeannie Suk ‘02 gave advice to students on the path to a Supreme Court clerkship. Thought it might be of interest.

It’s not every day that one of America’s most distinguished sports historians visits HLS, and it’s even rarer that a former professor of one our own distinguished faculty members returns almost fifty years after his first visit. Professor Bill Alford took great pride in introducing his Amherst College professor Allen Guttman, who compared himself to the last academic Harvard had waited almost half a century to invite back: Ralph Waldo Emerson. In a discussion sponsored by the East Asian Legal Studies program, Professor Guttman described the continuing development of the modern Olympic Games as the International Olympic Committee prepares to pass the torch to China for the games of 2008.

“I begin by saying emphatically that the Olympic games have always been politicized,” Guttman posited. “The view of 19^th century liberalism was that the Games and politics should be kept separate… it was the Marxist view that interpreted sports as a form of politics.” The modern Olympic games were the brainchild of Pierre de Coubertin, a French historian and patriot committed to restoring his country’s morale and image in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War. Driven by the goal of securing international political peace, de Coubertin galvanized support for reinstating the Olympic games. “It really was a social and political movement,” Guttman described.

De Coubertin’s image of the Olympic games incorporated athletes of the international community with no national distinction. As Guttman pointed out, this notion became starkly unrealistic with the emergence of Nazi Germany and a Stalinized Soviet Union. The stadium Germany constructed for the 1936 Games in Berlin even had a passageway to commemorate German soldiers who had fallen during World War I. “Opening ceremonies have become extremely nationalistic over time around the world…the 1984 Games in Los Angeles were Hollywood pageantry. Each Olympics has had a national display and a commemoration of the host city.”

But what about the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing? According to Guttman, the International Olympic Committee must resolve the Two-China problem. Historically, the competitions of the teams representing the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China have been disparate in order to avoid acrimony. “Will the 2008 Games be political? Of course, they can’t be anything else!” Guttman concluded. Interestingly, the planners, who are not communist functionaries or bureaucrats, have stressed that the Beijing Games will be humanistic in nature. “In other words, humans are neither dominant nor subordinate to nature, but equals… in a spirit much closer to de Coubertin’s visions than any other Games.”

What do you get when you cross a Pulitzer-Prize winner with a Fox News antagonist of Bill O’Reilly and a punchy staff writer for the New Yorker? Just another typical night of discussion at HLS, apparently. Moderated by Noah Feldman and sponsored by the HLS Law and the Arts Initiative, the evening elicited banter and frank colloquy on marrying the media with the law among three highly regarded journalists who also happen to be HLS alumni: James B. Stewart’76, Pulitzer Prize Winner, 3-time Loeb Award Winner, and NYT Bestselling Author of Den of Thieves and Disney War; Jeffrey Toobin’86, New Yorker Staff Writer, CNN Legal Correspondent, and NYT Bestselling Author of The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson and The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court; and Lis Wiehl ’87, Legal Analyst, Fox News and Co-Host, The Radio Factor, Author of The 51% Minority: How Women Still Are Not Equal and What You Can Do About It, and Winning Every Time: How to Use the Skills of a Lawyer in the Trials of Your Life.

Before they were bestselling journalists and media pundits, however, Stewart, Toobin and Wiehl all did time at big firms. “I never intended to stay at Cravath longer than three years,” said Stewart, “and then literally one day someone who knew I wanted to make the switch to writing approached me about getting in on the ground floor of what became American Lawyer magazine.” Wiehl’s story was a bit more happenstance, but she advocated being focused and proactive. “I had taken a class on the 1^st Amendment from [New York Times columnist] Anthony Lewis… after working at a firm in Seattle for a bit, I contacted him about putting me in touch with Jonathan Landman at the New York Times… I worked on the law page at the Times for three years.”

While all three panelists had worked on their college papers or done amateur radio, none foresaw the media opportunities that became available after HLS when, in the early 1990s, the networks discovered the need for legal analysts to interpret the legalese of nationally headlining cases. When asked by Feldman about reporting on the ‘crimes of the century’ and how they explain the legal implications of the stories they cover, the panelists admitted that it is a struggle. “Crime is an incubator of stories,” said Stewart,” that sweeps in elements of public discourse that include race, gender, celebrity, you name it.” Toobin agreed. “The O.J. Simpson case was a perfect combo of high and low in terms of the legal value attached to issues of race and sex… but it was also interesting and entertaining. The challenge is to invest the sleazy coverage with a level of intelligence,” he said, alluding to the Duke rape case. Stewart’s view on the mass media onslaught was less optimistic. “I tend to stay away from larger cases… the phalanx of cameras and the circus of the mass media freaks me out,” he said.

Just heard from 1L Ben Wu that he has a fun summer job lined up:

“My summer position is in Corporate Development at Marvel Studios, the Beverly Hills-based West Coast and filmmaking arm of Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (producers of Spider-Man and X-Men). I’ll be reporting to the Chairman of Marvel Studios, David Maisel, an HBS graduate, and will be working on strategy and finance projects to build their film and licensing businesses. Marvel Studios just raised a $525 million debt facility to build an in-house movie studio. This summer the studio is filming its first Marvel-produced movie, Iron Man, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey, Jr. It is exciting because I will be there to assist and witness the business evolve from a pure licensing-based model to a production-based model.”

We’ll check back with him this summer to find out how it’s going…

Daniel Gorlin runs the Harvard Committee on Sports & Entertainment Law.
This student organization brings to campus top executives and lawyers in the sports and entertainment industries and makes them accessible to students.

Through the organization, a wide range of speakers participate in discussion panels during events that are open to all students. The speakers have included major league baseball executives, members of the National Basketball Association, sports lawyers, entertainment agents, entertainers and celebrities, and commentators from ESPN. “A recent panel explored the impact baseball player agents have had on the evolution of the sport over the last ten to twenty years, from competitive balance to steroids,” says Gorlin. The theme of another panel: Is it the responsibility of celebrities to be good role models?

At another event, speakers addressed the control exerted over player’s personal autonomy, including what they wear and how they act off the field. Gorlin adds, “We recently featured a panel that was focused on the legal issues around using real people in the movies and on television,” such as the movie Borat and various reality television series.

The alumni are “tremendous,” he says. “It’s a very tough industry to break into, but having some of those friendly people in those positions is always very helpful.”

Meanwhile, Gorlin is busy supporting the brand-new Israel Baseball League. “It’s an unbelievable start-up,” he says. For working with the league, he’s received two winter credits and four clinical credits. “I’ve been exposed to the legal and business issues of this league as it writes its charter and by-laws,” he says, adding that he’s learning about revenue-sharing and organizational structuring in a clinical setting. “It’s been an unbelievable experience.”
The first pitch is in June!

Podcast: David Gorlin (8:20)