Anu Gulleria was a legal advisor for a mid-sized media company for about 8 years.
Her primary role involved handling legal documentation and ensuring compliance.
This was a broadcast production company.
As she grew to senior positions, she realised that she faced challenges during negotiation rounds with various third parties such as production houses, distributors, authors, etc., due to the following reasons:
- Lack of confidence;
- Lack of knowledge of intellectual property rights
- Inability to apply the statutory provisions to real life deals
- Over and above that, the competitive and aggressive nature of the media industry making negotiations with third parties tough
Her role was primarily limited to accompanying her seniors for client meetings and assisting them in the deal finalisation process.
She would take notes and then finalise the contracts as per the instructions of her senior.
But then she realised that she was stagnating and couldn’t grow beyond a point.
Although it had worked out so far while she was a junior lawyer, she now needed to take responsibility of handling the deals herself, including end-to-end negotiations.
She could no longer piggyback on her senior’s expertise if she wanted to grow further.
That is when Anu decided to upskill herself and learn intellectual property & media laws.
She realised that most of the commercial aspects of the deal are left open to parties to negotiate and are not directly addressed under the Copyright Act.
So she had to learn about how the media industry works and different parties earn revenue.
Then she learned the commercial best practices, concepts around revenue and IP sharing in co-production agreements, right of first refusal, etc.
Before she could use this understanding in the real world, she practised drafting these clauses and got feedback from our team.
As she learned new skills she started participating in negotiations.
Her senior was impressed.
This encouraged her further to learn more skills.
It also made her senior’s life easier.
Her senior slowly started taking a back seat in the negotiations, letting Anu handle most of the work.
Within a couple of months, Anu was negotiating several deals independently, with her senior barely adding a couple of occasional inputs.
In one instance, she managed to secure certain additional rights for her company in a major co-production agreement.
This would have previously been a very challenging task for Anu to take up, but she was able to do that now.
During her annual appraisal, Anu’s managers noticed her enhanced negotiation skills and the advantages that she brought to the table as a legal advisor.
She was promoted to Senior Legal Advisor and received a substantial raise for her invaluable contributions.
Nowadays, she also has opportunities to work on several cross-border matters.
Anu realised that she could have achieved these results even earlier if she had prepared accordingly!
She will soon need to hire a junior for her team, and she is clear that she will hire someone who is trained in IP, media and entertainment laws!
The IP, media & entertainment industry in India is very big and expanding very fast, with employers across the following sectors who want to hire lawyers who are trained in IP laws: e-commerce, publishing, fashion, fantasy sports, OTT, pharma, music, etc.
It is possible for any lawyer irrespective of their seniority to learn IP and get very exciting jobs in this industry.
Even law students can do it.
If you learn IP, media and entertainment laws you can land fantastic internships and job offers in IP law firms and in various media companies.