April 05, 2022

Hollywood's Top 11 Law Schools 2022 - Hollywood Reporter

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Illustration by Erin Dwi Azmi

With a legion of alumni across Hollywood, UCLA boasts a roster of professors renowned for their industry expertise and connections. Every major entertainment topic offered through the Ziffren Center for Media, Entertainment, Technology and Sports Law is taught by a leader in that field. Highlights include two content distribution courses taught by Ken Ziffren and a TV law course with Lionsgate president Sandra Stern. In response to recent trends, the school plans to create a video game law class focusing on the metaverse and NFTs.

The iconic Ivy League institution offers courses emphasizing hands-on experience, through programs including the transactional law clinic and the Recording Artists Project, to steer students toward a career in entertainment law. RAP and entertainment law clinic students often advise musicians and labels on their legal rights and have the opportunity to help negotiate recording, management and publishing agreements.

Another L.A. powerhouse, USC this year launched a new course called Sports Law in Practice that integrates the legal and business skills required to represent athletes, with a focus on Major League Baseball. It also started offering a course focusing on the practical legal and business skills required to work in a boutique entertainment law firm, and plans to integrate the novel legal issues raised by the metaverse and the NFT market into its video game and digital media law courses.

A stone’s throw from Silicon Valley, Berkeley offers the country’s most extensive curriculum of courses on intellectual property and privacy through its biggest draw, the Law and Tech program. New this fall is a course on the fundamentals of tech transactions that will teach the basics of licensing, selling and buying content. It also was among the first schools to have student groups dedicated to discussing issues around the blockchain economy.

Columbia’s Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts feeds Hollywood a steady stream of able lawyers. Notes alumna Nina Shaw: “It’s focused on the broader understanding of issues around intellectual property and is very, very current. It looks at issues that are important to us like developments in the areas of publicity and fair use.”

The L.A. school boasts the country’s oldest two-year J.D. program and a well-regarded summer study in London. It also has significantly expanded its Entertainment and the Arts Legal Clinic, which has represented projects that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and have streamed on Netflix and Amazon.

The New York City-based school offers training and development opportunities related to representing businesses in a variety of fields with the FAME Center for fashion, art, media and entertainment, Tech Startup Clinic, The Blockchain Project and the Filmmakers Legal Clinic. Alumnus Greg Slewett says there’s a “thriving film and TV community,” emphasizing the opportunities to connect to the indie film industry, comics, playwrights and authors.

Through its well-known entertainment fellowship program, a partnership between top Hollywood studios and law firms designed to create a pipeline of ready-to-perform lawyers, Loyola gives students invaluable access to the inner workings of entertainment law. New this spring is a course on entertainment negotiations taught by HBO Max vp business affairs Susan Ehring.

Cornell’s biggest draw is its small class sizes, according to alumna Nancy Bruington. “It’s in a relatively small town, but it’s cosmopolitan,” she says of the upstate New York ivy. “That environment really allowed me to connect with my classmates and learn who had similar interests.”

Georgetown separates itself from L.A.-based schools by introducing students to the inner workings of Washington, D.C. “We have a huge public law and policy curriculum, but it’s actually lobbying,” says alumnus Christopher Spicer. “Seeing how different organizations need to have influence on Washington was pretty clear during the pandemic. Knowing how that influence works is a leg up.” The entertainment industry employs lobbyists to represent their interests on issues such as copyright protection, net neutrality and taxes.

Nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford boasts a world-renowned copyright and trademark protections curriculum that’s landed graduates at top-tier intellectual property firms. Not only that, the school hammers into students the key elements of succeeding as an attorney, according to alumna Ashley Yeargan, who says, “Being a good lawyer is about the fundamentals, and Stanford is one of the best law schools in the world.”

This story first appeared in the March 30 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.



source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/top-11-schools-entertainment-law/

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