<p>Is there an undergraduate major for this? Any classes in undergrad? </p>
<p>Or do you study this in law school?</p>
<p>Also, what are some big firms that specialize in Entertainment law.</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>Uh, well mass communication degrees usually have a media law course. My degree had media law and media ethics courses.</p>
<p>Some schools, like UCLA Law offer entertainment law classes.</p>
<p>Common consensus is you go to the best school you can get into or one just below that with scholarship money, and then you have a greater opportunity to try and find your way into the field of your choice. But obviously with the economy, this is not an easy thing to do.</p>
<p>Belmont University in Nashville is opening a new College of Law this year that will have music business law as one of their concentration areas.</p>
<p>Most entertainment lawyers are transactional lawyers who specialize in contracts related to production entertainment projects, and licensing the end results. (There are some attorneys who litigate things when deals go wrong, but my guess is that they think of themselves as litigators rather than entertainment lawyers.)</p>
<p>My law school had one or two courses, if memory serves, explicitly about the field. But coursework in the following subjects would be useful to someone contemplating a career in this area:</p>
<ol>
<li>Contracts (a required course for first year students);</li>
<li>Intellectual property law (with more emphasis on copyright and trademarks than patents);</li>
<li>Labor law;</li>
<li>Courses on forms of business organization: corporations, partnerships, LLCs.</li>
</ol>
<p>It helps a great deal to have connections within the entertainment industry. Take, for example, “Chunk” from the Goonies. He’s managed to rebrand himself as one of the top attorneys in tinseltown by first embracing his kitsch-value.</p>
<p>You don’t have to study anything special in undergrad to get into entertainment law. Business, econ, poli sci and even international relations can all be helpful, but a well rounded currciulum is probably the most helpful thing. The best way to get a start in the business is to get a clerkship with an entertainment lawyer or law firm while you are in law school.</p>
<p>The reality is that you don’t study to become an entertainment lawyer ( or most any other kind of lawyer), at least not in school. You first become a lawyer, and then you go to work as an associate to an older lawyer who practices entertainment law. This can be in a large (better pay) or small firm (worse pay)–but the important thing is to apprentice yourself to a lawyer who can serve as a role model for you, train you in the law, and introduce you to contacts in the industry. Learning any area of law is essentially an apprenticeship. After a few years, you will (if you are smart and work hard) start to develop your own client base and will be an entertainment lawyer.</p>
<p>Another way of doing it is, after law school, going to work in a corporate law department for a company in the entertainment industry (Disney, Sony Pictures, etc.). You will be approaching the issues from the other end but the law is the same.</p>
<p>I think this question can be rephrased as “Where can I see the mythical unicorn?”</p>
<p>I’ve never seen a unicorn, but I have known a few entertainment lawyers in my day.</p>
<p>My experience is that most of us who practice law long-term find ourselves in places ar various points along the way that we could only have vaguely imagined when we started on this path. </p>
<p>I did general litigation (mostly personal injury) for a dozen years; I’ve been working in-house as a software licensing attorney for longer than that now. The number of attorneys working in that area was very small when I was in school. (I’m actually old enough to have been personally acquainted with the first in-house attorney IBM ever hired.)</p>
<p>People who are my age who do what I do for a living found their way to their present positions by circuitous, serendipitous routes. I became a licensing attorney, indirectly, by marrying a licensing attorney who had friends who became my friends, and were willing to persuade others to take a chance on me when I wanted to make a career change at a time when there was an acute shortage of people who already knew how to do what I wanted to do. They took a chance on me because I had demonstrated success in other realms, and had proven myself to be a quick study.</p>
<p>It’s not really possible to plan that far in advance in today’s world. Prepare yourself for your next step by working hard, and by maintaining curiosity about everything, by always seeking to learn as much as you can about whatever you’d doing right now. Make the most of the opportunities you are given, whatever they are, and good things will happen for you.</p>