Carrie Casselman ’03, an honors graduate of Stanford, became interested in law while majoring in international relations. She wrote a senior honors thesis on Germany’s economic unification and its consequences for Korea. At the same time, she produced two musicals and a student-written play that were performed by a nonprofit student theater group. After college, she spent two years working for the Seattle Repertory Theater as an arts-management intern and grants associate. When Carrie told her career-center counselor about her dual interests, the counselor told her about Columbia’s four-year joint Law--MFA degree program.
Says Carrie, “I didn’t know how to reconcile these two very strong interests, so learning about the Columbia program was like a bolt of lightning.” She adds that both the Law School and School of the Arts have been very supportive of her and other students pursuing joint degrees.
Carrie began her law degree first, completing the entire first year of law school before taking arts courses. Her second year consisted primarily of law courses, including Copyright, the Clinical Seminar in Law and the Arts, and the Law and the Theater seminar, but she also took one management seminar in the School of the Arts. Now in her third year, Carrie is an MFA student taking one class at the Law School. As a research assistant for Professor Jane C. Ginsburg, Carrie is researching the concept of authorship, including comparisons among United States, United Kingdom, and Australian law, for a future lecture to be given by Professor Ginsburg.
“Having an industry in which to frame my questions about law has made the study of law more interesting for me,” says Carrie. “Negotiating contracts, managing budgets—the law informs so many of the things that I’ll need to deal with in theater management.” She adds that, although the joint program might not seem like a natural complement on the surface, “the law school provides a way of looking under the surface to see a new side of theater management. It makes theater management a more textured subject.”
The opportunity to live in the U.S. theater capital has also been a plus for Carrie, who says she has seen more than 50 shows since she has been at Columbia. “New York is an amazing place if you’re interested in these issues,” she says. “Doing both programs has been a huge advantage.”
Like Carrie, Taren Spearman ’03 was motivated to apply to law school by her interest in the arts. Taren began dance lessons at the age of four and didn’t stop until her undergraduate studies, at Barnard, required her full attention. During high school, she accepted scholarships to the Joffrey Ballet and Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. Now a Columbia Law student, she is president of the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Society (EASLS).
While in college, Taren made it a priority to speak with every lawyer she could find who was involved in intellectual property. Along the way, she met Marcia Sells '84, a graduate of both Barnard and the Law School, who at the time was working for the National Basketball Association. “Through her, I realized that I could combine my interest in law and entertainment,” says Taren. She became an intern at the NBA—“a profound experience”—which added to her understanding of the breadth of options in the realm of intellectual property.
Taren’s organization, EASLS, is one of the largest student organizations on campus, with more than 75 students and a 10-member board. “Our goal,” she says, “is to expose the law-student body to a wide range of areas and alumni/ae who are practicing in entertainment.” Together with the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts, EASLS organizes panels and runs a brown bag lunch series that has hosted such guests as David Stern '66, commissioner of the National Basketball Association and president of Columbia’s board of trustees, and Michael Cardozo '66, New York City’s corporation counsel—both sports attorneys; as well as Peter Benedek '73, an agent at United Talent Agency; and other graduates.
“Entertainment-industry work relies heavily on making contacts, and since we have such a renowned body of graduates who are involved in this area, we place students in an intimate setting so they can start that network now.”
Taren spent her first summer of law school working in the business-affairs department of Tommy Boy Music, which produces urban alternative and techno/dance music. Working for Brian Robinson '91, the department director, she saw firsthand the tensions that arise in balancing artists’ rights with those of a record company. Other memorable experiences at the Law School include evening discussions at the Kernochan Center with IP professionals.
“In small settings, students feel free to ask about anything,” Taren says. “It’s not a traditional area of the law, and it’s so exciting seeing past graduates go beyond what you would ordinarily think law school was about. They’ve taken their own personal interests and shaped the law to accommodate their goals rather than pigeonholing themselves into what might be considered the typical mold for lawyers.”
In describing her plans to work for a traditional law firm before eventually working with artists, Taren quotes Michael Cardozo, who told EASLS members, “Every artist needs a good lawyer first. So you need basic, traditional training in contracts and negotiations.”
When Severin Jann Roelli ’02 returns to Zurich, Switzerland, to work in a law firm, he says, “I’ll be able to negotiate in English—the language of international business—and just as important, I’ll have an idea of how an American lawyer thinks, to a certain extent.” Although Severin hopes to spend a year at an IP boutique law firm in the United States after completing Columbia’s LL.M. program, he knows his new skills will serve him especially well in Europe, where he plans to continue his work in the IP field and perhaps eventually to work in the film industry.
Severin, a Swiss lawyer, came to Columbia Law School after several years working with two Zurich firms. There, he worked with Web-based publishers in negotiations with content providers—an area that combined copyright and contract law. A fashion and editorial photographer before going to law school, Severin felt his intellectual needs weren’t being satisfied as an artist. “Even today, I experience a tension with the urge to be creative as an artist,” he says. “But it’s enough that I can work with people doing this kind of work. This is why I knew I wanted to work in a firm that works on IP.”
Severin chose Columbia because of its New York City location, its reputation, and the immediate affinity he felt toward the campus. “There is a spirit in the place,” he says. He has taken Entertainment Law as well as a film-production class in the School of the Arts. “That combination was really a great thing because I had a view from both sides,” he says. “I had producers speaking about how careful you have to be with lawyers in the film business, and the next day a lawyer was telling me how careful you have to be with producers. It was perfect.”
Currently taking the Seminar on Intellectual Property with Dean Alice Haemmerli and the course on Copyright with Professor Ginsburg, Severin notes that the approaches to law are different in the United States and Europe, but the end results are often the same: “In European civil law contexts, we are more structured, whereas in the United States we have case law. You have to be aware of that when you negotiate with an American lawyer, because they have a completely different approach. Even if, in the end, you often get the same result, it’s important to know how they got there so as not to destroy the negotiation.”
Where some might see a chasm between law and Christopher Lucht’s former career, he insists there are certain similarities. “In a basic way,” he says, “‘black-letter’ law, like the notes on the page, is only the beginning. It’s what you do with it that makes it interesting.” Lucht ’02 should know. After all, he was a classical trumpet player for 12 years before coming to law school. “If you just play the notes,” he says, “it can be pretty mundane; but, the interpretation is what’s important.”
Now in his third year of law school, Christopher is editor in chief of the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts and a teaching assistant for the Clinical Seminar in Law and the Arts, which he took during his second year. He holds a masters degree from Yale School of Music and has played professionally all over the world. In 1992, Christopher conducted the New Haven Contemporary Music Ensemble. From there, he taught music beginning in 1992 and then added the job of dean of students at Simon’s Rock College from 1993 to 1998.
The Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts, explains Christopher, covers traditional areas of the law such as copyright and trademark, as well as entertainment, sports, visual arts, and Internet-related law—both national and international. “We try to figure out what the issues are. We publish pieces by academics and some practitioners in the IP field, great authors, like Jane Ginsburg and Robert Gorman, and some student notes.”
“We publish not only traditional articles but also case comments and book reviews,” says Christopher. Recently, Dean Alice Haemmerli wrote a lengthy case comment on the Tasini case, and Professor Ginsburg published a long review of Professor Jessica Litman’s controversial book Digital Copyright. The journal also publishes the annual Manges Lecture on IP given at the Law School.
Following graduation, Christopher will clerk for a federal judge and then begin a job at Irell and Manella, a Los Angeles law firm specializing in entertainment law and intellectual property litigation. After having gone 12 years without missing a day of trumpet practice prior to law school, he is also looking forward to having a schedule that allows him to join a local symphony.
