I searched unsuccessfully for a literary attorney for years. People would tell me just to call my business lawyer when my referral requests repeatedly failed to yield results. “She’s great, but she doesn’t specialize in author legal advice,” I would argue. Then I found Kathryn Goldman — editor-in-chief of the Creative Law Center, a lawyer at Goldman & Minton, P.C., and the author of a free e-book, Rip-Off Protection Report for Creative Professionals. Problem solved.
To be honest, until I visited Kathryn’s website, I’m not sure I really had any idea of just how much author legal advice we all need. I had clearly found that elusive literary legal resource I’d been seeking.
The first writing coach client I sent to Kathryn was convinced that he could use videos he had found online for his own creative and marketing purposes. A quick conversation with her settled that question (as I had suggested, he needed to seek written permission) as well as a few other issues related to a workbook he had written years prior. “I am forever indebted to you for insisting that I have that conversation,” he wrote me in an email sent just ten minutes after hanging up.
I also urged two of my clients writing memoirs to seek her legal advice. In both cases, I was concerned that they were going to get themselves into trouble with what they had written. They both wound up talking to Kathryn after watching her How to Minimize Risk When Writing Memoir workshop. They made the necessary changes and my worries disappeared. I was also able to find terrific advice for them on writing disclaimers just by checking out her website.
Kathryn’s Creative Law Center website has some 40 workshops ranging from business and legal concerns to creative advice, all of which are available for free to members. “This is where creative professionals come to learn about the law so they can create with confidence,” she writes on her website. “The Creative Law Center is designed to deliver practical, easy-to-understand, actionable information ~ brought to you by someone who admires artists of all styles and writers in all genres, is intrigued by their creative process, and believes that now is the time for artists to prosper by their art.”
When looking for author legal advice, what’s not to love about that?
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