Law on Order
Volunteer attorneys help bands in a jam.
Let's face it. Artists don't exactly have a reputation as crack business people. Sure, the Rolling Stones are a bigger brand name than the phone company sponsoring them, and whole marketing courses are taught on a multinational corporation called Madonna. But below that uppermost tier of uberstars, there are thousands of artists that lack the funds and legal know-how to protect themselves when the Big Bad Wolf blows their house down, or infringes on their copyright, or whatever it is Big Bad Wolves are doing these days.
Enter a host of non-profit legal organizations that make it their business to protect local artists from getting the shaft.
One such group, Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts (WALA), has been fighting the good fight since its formation in 1983. Predictably, New York and California blazed the trails when it came to such organizations, but WALA was among the first to get a foothold in a smaller market. "[WALA] was started because the artist community in Washington is so small, and people didn't know where to turn," says Paige Conner Totaro, WALA's Director of Legal Services. "Often, artists thought they had to go to New York, California or Nashville [to get legal help]."
WALA is willing to go the distance for the artist community, but Totaro says it often isn't necessary. Once a wronged artist has established legal representation in their corner, shady characters often change their tune, and most cases are quickly settled with the help of a mediator. "Just the fact that the artist had the initiative to come to us is often enough to make them think twice," Totaro says. "They usually know they were wrong," she adds with a chuckle.
But why exactly would these attorneys give up their time to help out folks who often can barely afford a new set of guitar strings? Totaro acknowledges that motivations vary widely among WALA's stable of 350 volunteers. Many work for firms that require their lawyers to perform pro bono work. Firms looking to break into the entertainment field sometimes use it as a low-key marketing tool. And sometimes, Totaro says, lawyers are simply desperate for interesting work that allows them to escape the countless hours they spend wading through Washington's never-ending reserve of bureaucratic paper.
But even if volunteers aren't always motivated by pure altruism, plenty go well above the call of duty. Totaro notes a pending case in which lawyers have already performed over $15,000 worth of free work in an attempt to recover less than $5,000 for a band that got screwed by a crooked CD manufacturer.
And in one of their higher-profile cases, WALA went out of their way for two street musicians who were arrested, fined and stripped of their instruments for playing outside of a subway station in 1993. Things looked bleak for the would-be musicians when they lost their first case. But Ron Dove, their attorney, appealed. Finally, in the summer of 1996, the fine was dropped and the instruments returned. More importantly, a precedent was set that cleared public streets as a legal makeshift stage for future musicians.
Almost every state has some sort of organization that provides artists with legal assistance. Check your local yellow pages.
by Jonathan Carson
carson@outersound.com
