18TH STREET One of the biggest nightmares for a start-up company is to find out that someone else has the same idea.
That was what Michael Masucci faced almost 15 years ago when he learned that Apple Inc. was about to launch a new product called “EZTV.”
The only problem was that EZTV was also the name of a small video arts group where Masucci served as the director.
“We thought we wouldn’t be able to fight a giant company like Apple but we decided to look at what our rights are,” Masucci said.
With minimal resources and a lack of knowledge of copyright and trademark laws, the group at EZTV contacted the California Lawyers for the Arts, a non-profit organization that helps artists connect with attorneys that have specialization in the field in which the pending litigation concerns.
One short letter to Apple Inc. later, the EZTV name was safe.
“They didn’t fight us, they didn’t argue, it never went to court,” Masucci, who still works at Santa Monica-based EZTV, said on Friday. “The law is so complex that it’s almost impossible for somebody not an attorney to even know what their rights are let alone know how to proceed.”
The video arts group, located in the 18th Street Arts Center, is one of thousands of clients that have received pro bono legal assistance from the California Lawyers for the Arts (CLA), whose Southern California branch will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a fundraiser on Sunday at Bergamot Station.
“I’m a real fan of what they do,” said Masucci, who shoots promotional videos for CLA, which coincidentally is their neighbor in the 18th Street Arts Center.
The Santa Monica branch is part of the larg-er California Lawyer for the Arts organization that was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1974. Then known as Bay Area Lawyers for the Arts, the nonprofit organization was established by a group of practicing attorneys and artists that saw a need to provide legal aid for a financially struggling community, offering assistance in areas ranging from landlord-tenant issues to battles over intellectual property.
“It was the core value of the organization that we would always have on the Board of Directors at least 50-50 arts professionals and lawyers,” Steve Camber, one of the founding members, said on Friday.
More than 13 years after it was founded, the organization entered a new chapter when it formed an alliance with the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts-LA, becoming the first statewide legal service organization serving the artists community. The partnership also served as the birth of the Southern California chapter of the California Lawyers for the Arts, which was originally located in Los Angeles and later moved to the 18th Street Arts Center.
Perhaps most unique about the regional branch of the organization is that it broadened its definition of “art” to encompass the entertainment industry.
“In Southern California, there is a lot of fluidity between what we think of the arts community and the entertainment community,”Victoria Goldfarb, the associated director of the Santa Monica chapter, said. “You think about animation or sound and you have all those people involved in the classic arts that have found a niche within the entertainment business to make a living.”
The organization maintains a database of lawyers that have specialization dealing with the arts and its related issues. Whenever a client calls into the center with a specific issue, they are referred to a lawyer within that data-base, which as of now includes about 40 attorneys in the area, Goldfarb said.
Non members pay a $30 fee and members pay $20 for a 30-minute consultation with an attorney from the “panel.” The cost for additional representation is negotiated between the client and the attorney, who in most cases recognize the financial burden on the artists, Goldfarb said.
“They’re sensitive to the issues of the people who are calling them, recognizing many of them are not established and many won’t be able to pay the (otherwise expensive) fees,” Goldfarb said.
In addition to legal referrals, CLA also offers mediation, which is funded through the California Dispute Resolution Programs where a portion of the filing fees in court goes toward funding different mediation programs, a method of reducing court cases. The organization also provides educational workshops, schooling artists on business and legal related matters such as book publishing laws and writing grant proposals.
One of the problems,according to Camber,is that art colleges and programs are not educating the students about some of the business and legal issues that they might face as professionals.
The local CLA is housed in a small intimate office, its white walls decorated with paintings and other art pieces. The office is run by a four-person operation, all of which are part-time positions, from Kelly Burik, who handles educational programs, to Karala Jenkins Turner, the intern coordinator.
The interns are key to the continuing operation of CLA, serving as the first connection between the artist client and the lawyer, Goldfarb said.
Krystle Curnutte became an intern at CLA last August to fulfill her pro bono requirement as a graduate student at Loyola Law School. Curnutte fell in love with the mission of the organization during the summer semester and decided to continue in the succeeding semesters.
Curnutte said she came in to the program hoping to enter the field of entertainment law, but is now going a different route, considering nonprofit work.
“Going home everyday, I felt like I was directly helping people,” Curnutte said. “It’s hard at most law firms to get that experience.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 1, 2008. Read the original PDF.