Few areas might seem further apart than the arts and the law. One deals with the expression of emotion and ideas with the goal of connecting and moving others, and the other operates in the realm of technicalities and minute detail. Outside of dealing with copyrights, most creatives rarely consider how the law might impact  or even help them, and instead focus on what they do best: create.

For an artist, legal help might seem unnecessary and therefore not worth the price tag. However, sometimes a creative team or an artist can find themselves embroiled in a legal quagmire that could have been avoided if a small amount of legal work had been done up front. This is a situation in which an ounce of prevention is often worth a pound of cure.

But what legal situations should a creative individual or team be aware of and potentially take care of before they become an issue?

Intellectual Property

The most obvious area is securing intellectual property rights. For artists, typically the most important kind of right is a copyright in the work they created. A few key issues to keep in mind when thinking about your IP rights as an artist:

• A copyright is made as soon as you create the work; however, to fully enforce those rights you must register the copyright with the government. This is only necessary if you are genuinely worried about individuals copying or stealing your work.
• If you make a work for someone else, you may not own all the rights in it. Make sure you understand the contracts you enter into, having them reviewed can be a low-cost way of ensuring that you have a full understanding and protect your rights.
• If you are part of a team, or collaborating, ensure that everyone knows how the rights are being divided or if they are going to belong to one person or entity.

Form an Entity

Artists and creative groups working on a project often will want to form a business (usually in the form of an LLC) to govern ownership rights, gain legal protection and otherwise operate in the world. Several benefits accompany business entities which might help you as an artist:

• Legal protection. An LLC (or other entity) offers some liability protection, allows for you to contract through the entity, open a business account, etc.
• An entity makes it easier to hire help as needed.
• Centralized ownership of IP rights. For example, if you are working on a large-scale creative project that involves multiple creators (e.g. a film, podcast, videogame, etc.), the creatives can utilize contracts to assign the creative work they do to the entity to centralize ownership and ensure that the project isn’t beholden to numerous individuals claims of rights, or potential turnover of creative talent.

Form Written Contracts

Often in the artistic world, the spark of inspiration flows quickly and freely, with individuals wanting to move quickly and create great works. However, it’s often worth taking a beat, hiring an attorney, and putting things in writing. This can protect and ensure:

• Everyone understands and agrees to the terms of the project, gig, etc.
• Everyone’s IP and other rights are secured and protected.
• Creates a record that all parties can look back to if there is a disagreement.
• If things ever unfortunately escalate to litigation, there is a document to ground the dispute so that it doesn’t devolve into a “he said-she said” situation.

So what’s an artist to do?

In short, create, but do so with the backing of a little legal help to ensure that your future success isn’t hindered by a lack of legal consideration. A little preparation can go a long way.

By Dane Fogdall