Career Options
Rubbing elbows with the StarsSPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT LAW ARE RELATIVELY NEW FIELDS. LEARN HOW THREE LAWYERS SPEND THEIR DAYS HELPING SHAPE OTHER PEOPLE’S CAREERS. By Hélèna Katz |
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 [ 2008-11-21 ] |
Daniel Dumais
Photo: Benoît Bruhmuller
It’s one of the most unusual questions that Montreal entertainment lawyer Sébastien Pigeon has ever faced in his practice. A production company wanted to know if they needed a permit to keep and film a camel in the streets of Montreal for a few days. “There’s never a dull moment,” the Ogilvy Renault lawyer chuckles of his work with film and television productions. He advises producers, broadcasters and distributors. “I never know what’s going to happen next.” Although some common threads run through every production, no two films are identical. “This means two days are rarely the same.”
Whether or not camels are involved, an entertainment lawyer is a jack-of-all-trades by definition. This area of law draws upon different specialties, applying the principles and issues from those fields to the entertainment industry. “There’s a bit of tax [law], a bit of labour relations, a bit of intellectual property, some commercial [law] and contracts,” Pigeon explains. “You have to be versatile and learn to manage those different specialties well.”
Learning the ropes
In this relatively new field where specialized courses at law schools are virtually non-existent, knowledge is gained largely through experience. “There’s very little written about entertainment law and [legal] ramifications, which is one of the problems for people entering the field,” he says. “It’s not like civil procedures where lots of books have been written and you can learn a lot by reading. With entertainment law, you learn mostly while practicing.”
Pigeon was called to the bar in 1999 and earned a Master’s degree in Information Technology Law three years later. Before joining Ogilvy Renault’s Montreal office, he worked as in-house counsel for Quebec production company Zone3 Inc.
The lawyer’s work at Ogilvy Renault includes everything from ensuring a production meets the requirements of funding agencies to handling permissions and contracts for shooting locations, making agreements with distributors and broadcasters, and drafting contracts. “There are a number of unions of artists, composers, musicians and writers, which means you have to be familiar with the different collective agreements between these associations and producers so as to negotiate contracts that respect those agreements,” Pigeon explains.
He also reviews a production’s content to ensure it is free of possible defamation, as well as violation of privacy, trademarks and intellectual property. “That means sometimes reading the script or watching some of the shooting after the first edit,” Pigeon says. “Yes, part of my job is to watch television (shows) or films before everyone else,” he laughs.
Entertaining relationships In the creative entertainment industry, where clients tend to pour their heart and soul into their projects, relationships are particularly important. “You have to be able to position yourself as a business partner and not just as a legal advisor,” Pigeon says. It’s the emphasis on personal relationships and helping clients achieve their goals that Montreal lawyer Nathalie Chalifour particularly enjoys. She was called to the bar in 1991 and worked with several law firms before starting her own practice in 2007. She handles contracts for artists involved in the music, television and film industries, putting her studies in film and communications to good use. “You need to understand what the person does, what they want to do, and how they want to position themselves (in their careers),” she says.
Relationships are just as important in sports law, whether a lawyer represents individual players or entire professional teams. Daniel Dumais, a partner with Heenan Blaikie Aubut in Quebec City since 1998, represents hockey teams such as the Montreal Canadiens and Pittsburgh Penguins at hearings when salary negotiations go to arbitration. He has worked on cases involving players Wade Reddon of the Ottawa Senators, Jason Arnott from the Nashville Predators and the Colorado Avalanche’s Joe Sakic.
Deals aren’t all business – a player’s salary conditions need to be determined while maintaining positive relationships between the player and the team’s management. “The more important the player is to a team, the more you have to maintain a relationship,” Dumais says. “You can’t win at all costs and get him so upset that he doesn’t want to play.” That means working on a win-win situation for both parties.
Dumais tries to determine a player’s value in terms of salary, based on their statistical performance, such as number of goals, assists and passes. “I like hockey and have always played, but I’m not a hockey encyclopaedia,” he confesses. “If we have a case that we think we may be dealing with in the summer, we will watch (the player) more closely during the season.”
Much of the work is crammed into the few short months of the off-season. “Above all, it’s summer work,” Dumais says, adding, “Some summers are busier than others.” The speed with which cases must be resolved makes the work stressful. Once a file is prepared, arbitration hearings can last five hours as each side presents its arguments. Cases need to be wrapped up before the next season begins. “There’s lots of pressure,” admits Dumais, a seasoned litigator. “We don’t have lots of time to go over things. We have to make decisions and live with them.”
Luckily for Dumais, the stressful summer period working on high-profile cases is balanced by the rest of the year, when he also practices commercial litigation and insurance law. Plus, sports law has given him the chance to realize a childhood dream. “Like a lot of Quebecers, when I was young I wanted to play in the NHL, but I reached the league through a job I love – as a lawyer,” he says. “If I can’t do it in one way, I can do it another.”
Future Prospects
Finding work in sports law is not always as straightforward as other areas of the legal profession. Being a player agent is one way to enter the field, but agents often have to take their business out of the office to find clients. “It’s not by putting up a sign that you’ll get clients,” Dumais says. “You have to go to arenas, where players are. In criminal law, when someone has a problem, they will phone a lawyer. In sports law, it’s a question of contacts.”
Establishing and maintaining good contacts is equally important in entertainment law, a field that is likely to grow in the long term, with an increasing emphasis on a knowledge economy and intellectual property. “This industry works a lot by word-of-mouth, who knows who, and who you’ve worked with,” Pigeon says.
Young lawyers wanting to break into show business can acquire experience by working as in-house counsel for producers and broadcasters or cutting their teeth in law firms alongside other entertainment lawyers. “It’s hard to break into this field if we don’t have the knowledge, we haven’t met people, and we haven’t worked with someone who has already done some [entertainment law].” You also have to be prepared for the unexpected camel question, apparently.
DID YOU KNOW?
Montreal lawyer Nathalie Chalifour founded the Association des juristes pour l’avancement de la vie artistique (AJAVA) in 1997 to bring together Quebec entertainment lawyers.
The organization informs members of the most recent developments in entertainment law through regular meetings and events. Most recently, it held a panel discussion about the impact of the Internet on the music industry. www.lajava.org
Have you ever slept while on the job?
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