Music lawyer

Music lawyer

'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,' says a follower of the rebel Jack Cade in Shakespeare's play Henry VI, Part II. An extremist sentiment to be sure, but one that invariably draws a laugh from audiences. While Shakespeare's intention may have been to poke fun at the uneducated, anti-intellectual common folk from whose ranks Cade and his rebels rose, he was also pointing out the public mistrust of the legal profession and its practitioners.

The quote continues to resonate today, because lawyers are still viewed with suspicion. Admit it, you know at least one lawyer joke. And yet the truth is that at some point, most of us will need a lawyer (buying a house is difficult without one) and our lives are increasingly, if not always perceptibly, shaped by complex legal decisions about such diverse topics as health and safety, copyright, the European Union and civil liberties.

The world of classical music is no exception. Consider the recent case of Sawkins vs Hyperion. Dr Sawkins, who had edited music of Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726), sued Hyperion Records, claiming copyright on the Lalande editions he'd prepared for a recording. He sued for royalties and won, both in the initial case in 2004 and at appeal in 2005. The legal costs of the case almost ruined Hyperion and the landmark decision has caused many record companies to re-examine their contracts - or to draw up a contract where once a vague verbal agreement would have sufficed. Suddenly the remark attributed to 1930s movie mogul Sam Goldwyn begins to make some sense: 'A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on.'

'You don't go into law because you're a musician. There's no relationship between legal and music skills'

But it's the pop world rather than the classical music world that has the most use for legal services. Cambridge-based barrister John Byrne began his career at Harbottle & Lewis, a leading media and entertainment chambers based in London that has acted for, among others, Richard Branson, PolyGram, Eurythmics and leading record and film companies.

'Classical music didn't feature large,' says Byrne. Yes, there was 'the occasional problem with an opera singer who had a problem with traffic violations', but more common was the suddenly in-demand pop band who needed a legal eye to look over potential contracts from record companies that wanted to sign them and who were offering huge advances. Or perhaps the band had signed with company Y and needed legal expertise to extract themselves from a less attractive contract with company Z.

Byrne enjoyed his time at Harbottle & Lewis. 'I liked it there because I liked clients who were doing something creative. It might have been more boring if I had been dealing with insurance clients.' Byrne was later employed by a firm that went after cases of record piracy. 'You would actually go and raid people,' Byrne says. 'I did that for a year. It was awful.' Byrne established his own firm in 1987, focusing on copyright, entertainment and legal aid.

If you're considering swapping your musical career for a potentially more lucrative career in law, don't imagine that it will only be a glamorous existence of walking past a phalanx of flashing cameras as you stroll (in a hand-made Italian suit, of course) to court to rescue a dizzy pop star from the legal consequences of some recklessly irresponsible behaviour. And don't think that your musical background will necessarily give you a step up.

'You don't go into law because you're a musician. There's no relationship between legal and music skills,' says Byrne. He's an amateur violinist but claims that his musical training has been of limited help in his dealings with musicians.

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