Spotlight on Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts’ Creative Entrepreneurship Series

By Elena Kravtsoff, Esq.

This year, Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts (WALA) held its annual autumn Creative Entrepreneurship Series from October 2nd to November 6th. Each week volunteer attorneys lectured on topics relevant to artists who are interested in commercializing their work: business formation, funding and leases, contracts and licensing, tax strategies, negotiation skills, and intellectual property, specifically copyrights and trademarks.

Vance "Head-Roc" Levy, WALA’s Arts Ambassador, and Maggie Gladstone, the organization’s Legal Services Director, explain that WALA saw the need for “a comprehensive ‘toolbox’ series of workshops” to add to the organization’s popular monthly general workshops, and so they implemented the Creative Entrepreneurship Series, which is now in its fourth year. Mr. Levy and Ms. Gladstone say that the series allows entrepreneurial creatives to “[e]xplore the basics of forming a business for [their] creative endeavors, from deciding whether to incorporate as a non-profit or for-profit entity, to understanding copyrights and trademarks, to contract and negotiation skills, and finally to taxes and leases.”

This year, Cynthia Gayton, founder of the Arlington-based law firm Gayton Law, presented the workshop on contracts and licensing. Ms. Gayton is a long time WALA volunteer attorney who got involved with the organization in 1996 at the recommendation of her intellectual property professor. She started by writing articles and case summaries for WALA’s newsletter, which evolved into presenting seminars. Ms. Gayton says that she has enjoyed the “different arts-related venues for the seminars,” and, that since she started presenting, she has found “the audience [] better equipped/knowledgeable about the legal issues they face.”