Phila. law firms look for a bigger role in L.A.'s entertainment industry

LOS ANGELES - For many of the nation's biggest law firms, this sprawling city of glitz and grit is, above all, the golden gateway to Asia's economic boom.

But for a steadily growing number of Philadelphia law firms, the city's mammoth entertainment industry - with its studios, its stars, and its seemingly limitless litigation - also is a rich source of revenue.

Nine of Philadelphia's largest firms have offices in Los Angeles, and most have entertainment practices they are looking to expand.

They range from Fox Rothschild, whose clients include actress Angela Bassett and rap star/actor Ludacris; to Ballard Spahr, which represents music publishers and a major music-licensing firm; to Cozen O'Connor, which handled litigation for former Philadelphian J.C. Spink, producer of the film A History of Violence and the recently released remake of Arthur.

At least five Philadelphia law firms have opened Los Angeles offices since 2006, most with an eye toward tapping into California's huge economy and its links to Asian markets. Emblematic of that approach is Blank Rome L.L.P., a 500-lawyer Center City firm that opened an office in the Century City section of Los Angeles in 2009, which it sees primarily as a base for serving clients across the country with business in Southern California, as well as a link to its office in Hong Kong.

But because the entertainment industry accounts for such a large share of the Southern California economy, Blank Rome lawyers say they expect that it, too, will be a source of substantial revenue.

"You can't be here and not have something to do with the industry," said Mark Greenfield, a Blank Rome partner who focuses on corporate finance, but whose work also touches on the entertainment world.

Though entertainment law typically does not generate the revenue of traditional deal-making, some firms like to highlight the practice area because of the star power that comes with high-profile Hollywood clients.

"With entertainment law comes a certain cachet. Everyone loves the entertainment area, with its icons, the Disneys and NBCs of the world," said Henry Shields Jr., a Los Angeles partner of Drinker Biddle & Reath L.L.P. and a Hollywood insider who serves on the board that oversees the Egyptian Theatre, one of the city's cultural landmarks, with other Hollywood power brokers.

The lawyers who practice in this space handle everything from copyright and trademark disputes to lawsuits over soured movie deals and legal representation for clients who run afoul of the law.

Many, like Corey Field of Ballard Spahr, who focuses on copyright and intellectual-property issues, have backgrounds in the arts. Fields has a doctorate in music composition and worked for European music publishers in New York before going to law school and joining the firm.

"I would have been perfectly qualified to become a distinguished professor of music, but there were no jobs," Fields said of his abbreviated music career.

Though Philadelphia's giant Comcast Corp. has become an even more important player in the entertainment world with its acquisition of a controlling interest in NBCUniversal, that isn't likely to give Philadelphia firms a leg up or otherwise alter the landscape for entertainment-focused lawyers, the company says. That's because choosing lawyers for industry-related matters will remain, at least in the near term, with NBCU, which has established relationships.

The Los Angeles offices of Philadelphia law firms typically are small compared with their offices in Center City or cities such as New York, where they traditionally have done more business.

For example, Drinker Biddle, which has a total of 650 lawyers, has 28 in Los Angeles and 10 more in San Francisco. But it has 220 in Philadelphia and 120 in Chicago. Blank Rome has 16 lawyers at its office in Los Angeles and 230-plus in Center City. Yet both firms see L.A. as a place to grow.

Cozen O'Connor has a total of 10 lawyers in its downtown Los Angeles office, which it plans to expand to 30, office managing partner Howard Maycon said.

The best-known entertainment-industry lawyers are the top deal-makers who represent celebrity clients and who work for a percentage of the transactions.

Among them is Darrell Miller, a partner at Fox Rothschild, a 500-lawyer Center City firm that in 2006 opened its office in Century City, whose office towers midway between downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica form a locus of movie studios, agents, and entertainment attorneys.

Miller, a former voice student who represents Ludacris and Bassett, sees himself more as an adviser to celebrity clients than a lawyer who handles nitty-gritty legal work. He prefers helping clients structure deals, or providing other strategic business advice. If they need help in a marital dispute, hard-nosed defense in litigation with a former partner, or representation on a drunken-driving charge, he tends to refer that work to other lawyers in the firm.

"My strategy is to become the consigliere for entertainers who often are high-net-worth individuals, who can generate millions . . . just like any business," he said. "My goal is to be their general counsel, through which all their legal affairs flow."

Often, though, being a lawyer to the stars isn't so grand.

The entertainment-law and intellectual-property section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association lists about 1,000 lawyers, and many of them spend their days sorting through commercial disputes centering on ownership of rights to images, stories, lyrics, and other content.

One of the legal issues that faced producer Spink during the making of A History of Violence was getting permission from D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc. to show one of its beer signs in a Philadelphia bar scene, a detail intended to give the movie authenticity.

Without the proper lawyering, use of the Yuengling image could easily have resulted in costly litigation over unauthorized use of a company trademark. And Southern California is where most such disputes play out.

According to one estimate, the Federal Judicial District of Central California, which includes Los Angeles, handles more copyright and intellectual-property litigation than any other federal court jurisdiction in the country.

"Entertainment law touches on everything," says Jeff Kichaven, a lawyer and mediator in Los Angeles with a focus on entertainment clients. "There are employees, so there are wage-and-hour issues; there are copyright issues, and intellectual-property issues."

Bare-knuckles litigation is part of the practice, too. Cozen O'Connor lawyer Justin Wineburgh represented Spink in a dispute over the rights to make the horror film The Ring after the movie came out and another film company claimed that it alone had the rights to make it in the United States.

The case eventually was settled under terms that were favorable to Spink and his production company.

Cozen O'Connor has long represented entertainment-industry interests in its substantial insurance practice.

But Wineburgh's work bears more of the earmarks of a traditional entertainment practice because he directly represents moviemakers in the deal-making phases of their projects.

Such was the case with The Art of the Steal, the documentary about the move of the Barnes Foundation to its new site on Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Wineburgh represented the makers of the film.

He also came by an important client, Spink, in traditional Hollywood fashion: The two are old friends - once fellow students at Penn Charter in Philadelphia.

For all his contact with glitzy Hollywood types, Wineburgh said it was important to keep perspective.

"You cannot be starstruck," he said. "People who are starstruck never succeed in the business."