bori?dom: Man of law

John J. Tormey III, Esq is a heavy hitting entertainment attorney from Nyc. His mix of experience and insight on the world of entertainment has brought him great success. He is old school but has been around long enough to find ways to help artists despite the rise in illegal downloads. I was given the privilege/honor to interview John J. Tormey III . Enjoy the experience, read the interview, and visit John J.Tormey?s website for further information. Interview

1. As a lawyer, how important is protecting intellectual properties?

Well, it may not be important to all lawyers in all parts of the practice and in all jurisdictions. Many other lawyers practice in such narrow areas of specialty, and/or in such unrelated fields, that intellectual property (I.P.) issues seldom if ever come up for them. Yet for a music and entertainment lawyer like myself, intellectual property protection is an everyday, life-time concern and a regular challenge.

In theory, every business-owner should have a working knowledge of I.P. After all, one's own business name is a property, usually claimable as a trademark or service mark. So, too, might be a band's name or an artist's name.

Clearly anyone in the field of entertainment needs to have a working knowledge of intellectual property - and with respect to their own original material, they need to be vigilant in regards to protecting it. The primary areas that need to be mastered in these respects, are the I.P. areas of copyright and trademark. A good starting-point is the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) website, to the extent an artist may not already be familiar with it. I first learned about copyright by writing to the USCO and requesting their written materials by mail. This was in the days before the Internet happened.

2. What is it like working with TV actors and musicians?

I love doing it, but for me it is business as usual. My father is an actor who started his career as a child actor in the 1940's. I grew up on tour with my Dad and my Mom while one or both of them were working on summer-stock or other performances.

I played guitar in a rock-and-roll band in high school with a piano-player named John ("Jojo") Hermann, who then became Widespread Panic's keyboard player. I played guitar in a rock-and-roll band in college with Tom Morello, who then became the guitar player for Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, and Street Sweeper Social Club, not to mention his work as The Nightwatchman. I still play rock music with members of my college band, in what little free time I have these days.

The majority of my friends are in the arts or entertainment in some way. So, it's more than working with actors and musicians. I live with actors and musicians, and in some cases I'm related to them.

3. How does it feel to be the force behind so many forms of media?

I would never say that, because I'm not the talent in the performance or recording. Maybe my clients are, if their work gets heard or seen in any individual case. I think if there is a "force" behind all of it, it's something more akin to divine inspiration - that moment when the creativity runs right through the artist as template or conduit. Artists are original but are also a product of their life experiences, and what they have already seen and heard. The "force" of artistic creativity is a lot bigger than any one of us.

That said, I think an entertainment lawyer has to have a respect of, and also a distance from, the art form. If you lose your objectivity you can't effectively represent someone. The Hippocratic Oath of doctors is something like, "First Rule, Do No Harm". Something like that is also true for an entertainment lawyer. While the first and foremost rule is to protect the client while following the law, one special corollary for entertainment lawyers should be "Don't Impair The Art Form". In other words, don't ever substitute your own notion of artistic judgment, for that of the artist - at least not when you're working, that is. Know that the art is bigger than you.

In this respect, my clients are the force. They teach me what art really is. Every day.

4. Can you tell us a little about your early life and what led up to being an entertainment lawyer?

I grew up in a show business family, as did many other kids I knew in 1960's Manhattan. I grew up in mid-town. I always ran into celebrities, and always recognized them when I saw them - from the newspaper or my old black-and-white television. My neighbors growing up were Walt "Clyde" Frazier, Jack Dempsey, Rusty Staub, Jake LaMotta, Ken Boswell, Jim Fregosi, and Dave Marshall. I played sports at an early age. I played music at an early age. Performances are what people did, and attended, in Manhattan, and still do. I've worked in other areas of commerce, with other forms of businesses, too, but I always considered entertainment the family business - much like a boy who grew up in his father's auto-shop might be more likely to become a mechanic later on, once grown up.

The main question to me was whether I was going to be a performer, as in a baseball player or rock musician - or alternatively, work in the businesses related to those performances. By the time I made that decision, I had already lived through life on the road, and life between casting calls - not to mention with a thrown-out pitching arm and fear of tinnitus. I didn't want to spend an unspecified amount of further time lifting P.A. stacks into and out of unmarked vans, or let the gigs take any more of a physical toll on me. I was thinking long-term. I was reasonably sure that as an entertainment lawyer I could stay as close as I wanted to, to the art forms that meant something to me. I was right.

5. What other lawyers inspire you?

Any lawyer that selflessly works on causes and gives back to the community. I have worked on environmental causes in the past, and that work is the most draining type of pursuit you can ever imagine. It's all-consuming.

My main inspirations are Phil Hoffman, Esq., who was my mentor when I started in the practice of law at Pryor Cashman in New York in 1987 - as well as my entertainment law professor from UCLA School Of Law, Gary Stiffelman, Esq. What they taught me, I take with me and use, every day of my working life.

6. What advice do you have for aspiring musicians?

Well, I wouldn't want my thoughts in an article misconstrued as legal advice for any specific person in any specific situation. That kind of advice should only be sought and obtained in a one-to-one and private dialogue with counsel.

However, I can summarize the things I might say to aspiring musicians who are friends of mine. The main thing now, in 2012, is not to give up. Collectively, we have just turned the corner, in terms of the American economy, and in terms of the music industry specifically.

Many nay-sayers for the past few years doubted whether new artists could ever make money and support themselves on music ever again. Sure, in some respects it is more difficult to do, post-digital downloading. But the music industry has already re-invented itself. The center of gravity is now performance and touring revenue, and merchandise. Don't fight the new model. Embrace the new model.

Furthermore, there is so much more that artists can do now to promote sales and make themselves known, including social media. And the trend is towards eliminating the middlemen who used to introject themselves into every income-stream. Embrace the new model. Make it your own.

I used to have music friends who were afraid to use cell phones. Now, those same friends are managing their publishing businesses with secure lap-tops while on tour. The main bit of advice to music friends always is, "Empower yourself, control your own destiny, and make sure that you (or your counsel) generate all your own documents". I tend to see artists as in either of one or two groups - "Victims", and "Empowered". The fundamental distinction between the two groups, is that the "Victims" make themselves beholden to other people's documents, whereas the "Empowered" control the drafting of their own documents. With the availability of desktop-publishing since the 1980's, there is no excuse in 2012 for not controlling the drafting of the documents that affect your life or your career. There is no reason to ever blindly sign on to someone else's form. All that does is make more work for the litigators.

7. What is your opinion on the current state of the music industry?

I'm sanguine about it.

The best new feature is the ability of artists to self-distribute, either by sale of CD's on tour at retail, or over the Internet.

The worst new feature also relates to the Internet, though, too - the ability of pirates to poach material digitally, in a matter of milliseconds.

Personally, I am happy that a premium is now placed on artists doing live performances, and more of them. To me, that is what the art form is really about, anyway. There are bands re-grouping after 20 or 25 years of inactivity, and going back out on the road. In a way, it's a shame that current economic realities force them back out on the road when they earlier thought they could comfortably retire on royalties. But the fact of the matter is, it's a good thing that one or two whole new generations of music fans now have an opportunity to see and hear these bands and artists. After all, once these bands and artists are gone, all that may remain are the recordings - and the recordings just aren't the same thing as a live performance, or the meet-and-greet afterwards.

8. What's the hardest part of being involved in the entertainment industry?

Knowing that some talent remains undiscovered... and, these days, seeing a trend towards the replacement of union talent with non-union talent, which is a somewhat-related issue. The just-world-hypothesis tells us that talent and hard work should be rewarded. It often is. But it is not always rewarded. Unfortunately politics and luck sometimes play a part in the reward outcome, too.

That said, the trend towards artist self-distribution might be the panacea. The market, the public, should decide which art they want to pay to hear, see, and experience. The decision should not be force-fed to the public by the same 3 or 5 corporate conglomerates.

So I think generally, the hardest part about being involved in the entertainment industry, is knowing that the continued concentration of economic power therein, in the hands of a few rather than many, prevents a lot of good material from being heard or seen.

My hope is that this changes in my lifetime, and that I get to see it. I am going to continue to fight to make the change happen, too.

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