Attorneys to Avoid
1. Avoid attorneys referred to you by a record company or publisher interested in signing you. I know of a well-known independent label, for example, which regularly refers prospective artists to the same attorney, and some of those artists end up hiring that attorney. That’s potentially a real problem for those artists, because that attorney isn’t likely to want to do anything that would possibly alienate the label, since the label is regularly sending him clients.
2. Avoid dabblers. By that I mean attorneys who hold themselves out as handling entertainment law matters, but who in reality don’t do much entertainment law work and don’t have much real expertise. That’s why it’s important to verify the true level of an attorney’s experience. ‘Trust, but verify.’
3. Avoid attorneys who boast to you that their involvement will bring you fame and fortune.
4. Avoid know-it-all attorneys with a deal killer mentality or who seem to have a chip on their shoulders. Often attorneys like this want to show how much they know, and one way to do that is to find as many problems with an offered contract as possible. By no means would I ever criticize any attorney for being thorough and detail-oriented, or for criticizing the terms of a contract. But I’ve seen some situations in which attorneys have, consciously or subconsciously, sabotaged deals which would have clearly been a win-win on both sides if only the attorney had been more focused on moving his or her client’s career ahead, rather than letting his or her ego take over.
5. You can also run into a variation of the same problem, but with inexperienced attorneys who don’t know what industry standards are and who, due to their lack of comfort with the situation, may decide that the safest thing to do is to tell their client not to sign a contract.
6. Avoid attorneys who seem reluctant to discuss legal cost issues in a straightforward way.
Big Firms versus Small Firms
You may find yourself in a situation where you need to choose between a smaller law firm and a large law firm. The size of law firms varies tremendously—from one lawyer to literally hundreds of lawyers at the big national law firms.
Here’s what I see as the advantages of each.
Advantages of Smaller Law Firms
Normally at smaller firms you’ll get more personal attention. As a general rule, the hourly rates will be lower and your legal costs will be lower.
Also, with a smaller firm you’re more likely to continue to work with one or two attorneys regularly, rather than being shunted around to different attorneys, which is more likely to happen at a large firm.
The clientele of a smaller firm is more likely to be primarily individuals and smaller companies, not large corporate clients. You are more likely to be higher priority at a small firm than at a large firm, where their big corporate clients sometimes get the most attention.
Also, the office atmosphere of a smaller firm usually feels more comfortable to most musicians.
Advantages of Larger Law Firms
Two main advantages of large law firms are their broad range of expertise on just about any kind of legal matter, and the size of their staffs. For example, if you have a visa issue while on tour in China, or an extremely complex tax issue relating to your royalties, a big firm is more likely to have attorneys on staff who are experts about those things. And if you get involved in complicated litigation and need a small army to go to bat for you, a larger firm will have that capacity.
All that being said, it’s unusual for musicians at the early stages of their careers to have those kinds of legal needs in the first place. And if those needs do arise, an experienced entertainment attorney at a small firm usually has a network of resources and can find the right help quickly.
