Christine Lepera may be one of the country's top music judges, but decades ago, she wasn't even sure she wanted to be a lawyer.
In 1986, just a few years after graduating from law school, she was working at a New York firm where she was “dissatisfied” and, like many young lawyers, faced existential questions about her career path.
“I never intended to be a music lawyer, and after four years at a corporate firm on Wall Street, I was basically ready to give up law altogether,” she recalls with a laugh.
Today, this is hard to imagine. Lepera — who chairs the music litigation group at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp (MSK) — has long been one of the music industry's go-to lawyers.
He handles many different types of cases, from representing Daryl Hall in last year's battle with longtime partner John Oates to the still-pending Dr. Luke in the just-settled defamation case against Kesha. But her main specialty is defending superstar artists against claims that they have stolen their songs from someone else.
In the past year, Lepera has handled such copyright cases for Dua Lipa, Jay-Z, Post Malone and others. In the past, he has done similar work for Katy Perry, Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), Drake, Ludacris and many others. For Lepera, who plays piano herself, bringing these lawsuits isn't just about the people involved, it's about their music — and their right to create without facing unnecessary lawsuits.
“What I get the most enjoyment out of is serving the music,” says Lepera. “In a lot of these cases, what you're dealing with are people who haven't stolen anything and just used basic musical building blocks. And the other side is literally trying to monopolize music that they shouldn't.”
In recognition of her achievements, she was named Lepera Advertising signLawyer of the Year for 2024. Associates Eric German, Bradley Mullins and David Steinberg are added to the Top Music Lawyers list.
Facing an impasse in her young career, Lepera turned to Martin Silfen—the former New York Law School law professor and a music attorney who represented clients such as Blondie, LL COOL J and Aerosmith—for advice. Silfen connected her with Leonard Marks, a legendary New York music lawyer who counted Billy Joel, the Beatles and Elton John as clients during his long career.
The timing was just right. At that point, Marks had several court cases from John Eastman, another powerful industry lawyer best known for representing Paul McCartney in his disputes with the other members of the Beatles (motivated by their relationship with the manager Allen Klein). The late Marks, whom Lepera fondly remembers as an eccentric lawyer with feelings-you-don't-believe-he's-a-lawyer, brought her into his small firm and gave her a shot.
“Len hired me, I started doing a lot of entertainment cases, and everything changed,” says Lepera.
From left: Attorneys Christopher Buccafusco, Christine Lepera and Carla Miller discussed how copyright law affects creators at a 2019 panel at Cardozo Law School in New York.
Rob Kim/Getty Images
One of the first major cases he handled was a copyright lawsuit filed in 1990 against Broadway composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who accused him of stealing the title song from his hit. The Phantom of the Opera by Baltimore functional composer. The case dragged on for years, with countersuits, multiple appeals and an attempted appeal to the US Supreme Court before ending in the late 1990s with Lloyd Webber's victory in a high-profile jury trial.
The lengthy lawsuit provided plenty of material for the young music attorney to cut her teeth on. “It was a 10-year extravagance,” Lepera says with a laugh. “And we won everything at the end of the day.”
In the years that followed, big musical affairs kept coming. In 2006, Lepera won a jury verdict dismissing Ye and Ludacris from allegations that they had rigged the 2003 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 of their hits, “Stand Up”, on a previous song. In 2015, he helped defeat a lawsuit that claimed Jay-Z and Timbaland had stolen material from an Egyptian composer for “Big Pimpin'” in 2000. In 2017, Lepera won a ruling that Drake had fair use of a jazz song when he tried it on his song “Pound Cake” in 2013.
The lawyer's career peaked in 2022 when she won a federal appeals court ruling that Perry's 2013 single “Dark Horse,” another Hot 100 No. 1, did not infringe the copyright of an earlier song. Not only was it a big win for the singer, flipping millions in damages, but it also set an important legal precedent that individual songwriters can't simply lock down musical “building blocks.”
For years, such lawsuits have been a source of concern for creators and companies alike, particularly after the controversial 2015 ruling that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams' “Blurred Lines” infringed Marvin Gaye's “Got To Give It Up.” In the years that followed, artists became more cautious about having their songs reviewed by musicologists, often preemptively offering author credits to would-be accusers rather than risk a lawsuit.
But from Lepera's perspective, song theft lawsuits didn't increase after the “Blurred Lines” verdict. Rather, it was always just an unfortunate byproduct of success. “You write a hit, you get a write-up,” he jokes. In fact, he suggests the verdict has had a positive impact: more artists are willing to stand up to contested charges, and more courts are willing to hear bad lawsuits.
“They will fight and not give in to this fear,” Lepera says of her clients and other contemporary artists. “Although it's a very tedious, expensive, inconvenient and uncertain process, I think we're seeing very strong advocates turning around and preventing these types of cases.”
Over the past year, Lepera has fought battles inside and outside the copyright field. He represented Lipa in two high-profile lawsuits alleging the star had plagiarized older songs when writing her megahit “Levitating.” In June, a federal judge dismissed one of them, agreeing with Lipa's argument that she had never heard the song in question. The other case, where Lepera has made the same argument, is awaiting a decision. Lepera also won a ruling in September tossing out a lawsuit against Jay-Z, Timbaland and Ginuwine who claimed they ripped off material from an old soul tune for the songs “Paper Chase” and “Toe 2 Toe.”
Perhaps most notably, Lepera settled Dr. Luke v. Kesha, in which her client claimed the pop star defamed him when she accused him of rape in 2014. After years of appeals and appeals, a trial was set for July 2023 ? Instead, a confidential settlement was reached in June. As part of the settlement, the two released a joint statement in which Kesha said she “can't narrate everything that happened,” while Dr. Luke maintained that he was “absolutely certain that nothing happened.”
The case of Dr. Luke v. Kesha, who started years before the #MeToo movement and has been hotly contested throughout that time, has sparked strong emotions on both sides and at times pushed Lepera herself into the spotlight. In deposition videos released in 2019, Lady Gaga told her: “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
When dealing with such situations as a lawyer, Lepera says she sticks to the “facts and the law” of a given legal argument and doesn't shy away from the celebrities involved or the PR dimensions that can come with it.
“I can't support a position if I don't believe in it,” he says. “I must truly believe in whatever I disagree with. I'm not really emotional. I don't have the dread of, “Oh, look who I'm representing.” “
Another major case of 2023 for Lepera was the public dissolution of the beloved duo Hall & Oates, in which he served as Hall's chief counsel. In the dispute, which attracted a lot of media attention thanks to sealed records later made public, Hall accused Oates of breaching their partnership agreement by unilaterally trying to sell part of their joint entity to Primary Wave, a prominent music label that has acquired many directories recently. years.
As the case unfolded, it became clear that the matter was deeply personal for Hall, who in legal filings called the alleged sale by Oates “the ultimate betrayal” and said it was designed specifically to hurt him after years of deteriorating relations between of the twin. . Oates later responded by calling the allegations “inflammatory, outlandish and inaccurate” and saying they had left him “deeply hurt”.
In late November, after a high-profile court hearing in Nashville, a judge sided with Hall and Lepera, putting the Primary Wave deal on hold and giving an arbitrator time to decide Hall's arguments against it. The dispute remains pending.
Because of the massive media attention, Lepera says the case was “very painful, obviously, for both of them.” Bands, he says, are “almost like family” and when things “fall apart” after a long career, there are bound to be strong feelings for everyone involved. After decades of handling such cases, he says the job of a good judge is to understand and absorb that human dynamic, but also to channel it into a winning legal argument.
“My challenge is to be there to absorb it and listen to it,” says Lepera, “but also to go through and get to the effect it needs.”
This story originally appeared in the March 30, 2024 issue Advertising sign.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/christine-lepera-billboard-lawyer-of-the-year-2024/
