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Richard A. Kurshner Law Offices of Richard A. Kurshner Phone: (310) 553-8800 Email: rick.kurshner@gmail.com |
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BUSINESS BIO: He has practiced law in California since 1974, after attending The George Washington University School of Law (J.D., 1974) and the State University of New York at Binghamton (B.A., 1971). After several years of general private practice, he worked in-house at a major music management/production company, handling legal and business affairs transactions involving recording, publishing, live performances, merchandising and management. He subsequently worked as General Counsel to a successful record company, negotiating various agreements with artists, distributors, and promoters. He returned to private practice at a small entertainment law firm, where he concentrated on the representation of television producers and served as production attorney to the ABC late-night series FRIDAYS. Thereafter, he was employed by NBC, first as Senior Contract Attorney, and then as Director of Business Affairs. At NBC, his duties included primary legal and business affairs responsibility for all types of transactions in all dayparts of development and production of network television. While at NBC, he was given responsibility for oversight of music rights and designed a business plan to integrate the music rights department to service all divisions of the network (News, Sports, Stations, and Entertainment) to take advantage of economies and music publishing opportunities. He left NBC to accept a position as Vice President, Legal and Business Affairs at Republic Pictures, where he reported to the Chairman and CEO, and supervised a department of lawyers, paralegals and other support personnel. His responsibilities covered all legal and business affairs matters for the development, production and distribution of television programming, including series, movies for television, and mini-series, network licensing, syndication, cable, acquisition and distribution of video, and library exploitation, both domestic and world-wide. At Republic, he initiated, designed and commenced implementation of the legal plan, which enabled Republic to essentially re-capture the classic film It's A Wonderful Life from public domain exploitation, resulting in millions of dollars of new revenue to the television and video divisions. He was next employed at Paramount, in the domestic television division. There his responsibilities included legal oversight of daily magazine and talk shows (Entertainment Tonight, Hard Copy, Leeza), as well as business affairs, domestic and foreign distribution of programming, library rights and exploitation, and general legal matters including supervision of litigation. He supervised outside counsel in the successful stage of a multi-million dollar copyright action against Paramount, and was asked by the California Copyright Conference to serve on a panel of executives to discuss the case. Immediately prior to establishing his own practice in 1997, he was Vice President, Business and Legal Affairs at Time Telepictures Television, the first-run syndication production division at Warner Bros. He was responsible for all legal matters pertaining to the production of EXTRA, a daily newsmagazine program, including copyright and media law. In addition, he was responsible for negotiating and drafting talent and production employment agreements for TTT's other programming (The Rosie O'Donnell Show, The Jenny Jones Show, In Person with Maureen O'Boyle). He is a member of the California Bar, and the Los Angeles Copyright Society. |