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In-house entertainment attorneys face a number of challenges navigating the shifting sands of today’s media and entertainment industry.  While much attention rightfully is paid to business issues – the decline of broadcast television, the rise of digital media and the endless quest to rein in costs – legal ethics deserves more time in the spotlight.

Jonathan Gottlieb and Zach McGee, entertainment attorneys with extensive in-house litigation and legal affairs experience working for two of the world’s largest media and entertainment companies, will identify, analyze and debate current legal ethics issues affecting in-house entertainment attorneys.  Some of these issues are caused by recent changes in the business, while others have been confronting lawyers for decades.

Topics will include:

• Managing conflicts of interest when a lawyer you engage to negotiate your personal employment contract also does business with your company
• The “treacherous path” of joint representation – duty of loyalty and overlapping privilege issues in the Broadcom case and beyond
• “A Passage to India” – unauthorized practice of law and other dangers when hiring foreign lawyers and others outside your company to do legal work
• Ethics, compliance and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – traps for the unwary when television and film production moves off-shore

This program will benefit in-house business affairs attorneys, legal affairs attorneys and litigators, as well as other lawyers who represent networks and studios.

Jonathan Gottlieb, Senior Vice President, Litigation, Fox Entertainment Group, Los Angeles, CA

Zachary S. McGee, Consultant and former Vice President, Legal Affairs, NBC Universal, Inc., Los Angeles, CA; President, New Media Legal Publishing, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Jonathan Gottlieb is Senior Vice President of Litigation for Fox Entertainment Group in Los Angeles, handling all manner of legal problems faced by Fox's film, television, and Internet properties.  He has substantial experience litigating in state and federal courts.  Mr. Gottlieb has presented on topics ranging from digital copyright law to the anti-SLAPP statute to mediation confidentiality.  Mr. Gottlieb clerked for the Honorable Roger J. Miner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and, before joining Fox in 2004, was Counsel in the Appellate and Litigation groups at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.  He is admitted to practice in California.

Zach McGee is a legal affairs consultant to NBC Universal, Inc., where he advises senior executives on litigation and transactional entertainment matters. Mr. McGee is also the President of New Media Legal Publishing, Inc., a legal publishing company based in Los Angeles, and a frequent author and speaker on topics of interest to in-house and law firm lawyers.  Before co-founding New Media Legal Publishing, Mr. McGee was a Vice President, Legal Affairs, with NBC Universal, Inc., where he represented and advised network and studio executives in copyright, profit participation and employment matters arising from development, production, exhibition and distribution of television programs.  Prior to moving in-house, he was a litigator with Davis Polk & Wardwell.  Mr. McGee clerked for the Honorable Michael B. Mukasey, Chief Judge, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (and former Attorney General of the United States).  Mr. McGee is admitted to practice in California and New York.

Podcast Accreditation Information

If you are seeking MCLE credit, please be sure to read both documents provided in My Programs after purchase of the podcast in their entirety.

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