Entertainment lawyers work within a variety of legal fields, including intellectual property, contracts, and employment law. Although the work of an entertainment lawyer tends to lean towards transactional, there are also opportunities in litigation (for example, in disputes between talent agents and their clients). Entertainment lawyers may work for actors and athletes, or work in-house at production companies or in other industries, though they tend to focus in a specific area (music, film, television, etc.). Entertainment lawyers may help clients with concerts and touring, music licensing, union agreements, celebrity appearances, or as serving as production counsel for a variety of broadcasts.
Entertainment lawyers may also work in copyright law. They can secure copyrights for original works, like scripts and screenplays, though these laws only protect the material itself and not the general concept. This is an important aspect of entertainment law, as a number of Hollywood movies get sued every year for copyright infringement (for example, Kouf v. Walt Disney Pictures & Television, where the plaintiff argued that Disney stole his screenplay "The Formula" when they released the movie "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids").