Law was a second career for Jay Dougherty. After graduating magna cum laude from Yale, he decided to pursue his love of music and formed a rock band. Although his band, Tricks, had gigs at some of the hottest clubs in the country, they never did get a national record deal. And Mr. Dougherty was always broke. He decided to pursue another interest - law. After receiving his J.D. with honors from Columbia University School of Law at age 31, Mr. Dougherty joined the entertainment department of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York, where he represented Broadway composers and authors. During law school, Mr. Dougherty worked as a legal assistant at Arista Records and considered focusing his legal practice on rock and roll, representing fellow rock musicians. "But I took it too personally," he said. "If I saw contracts for bands I didn't like I'd get angry saying 'I hate this band, how did they get this deal?'" After several years in New York, Mr. Dougherty decided to focus on film and moved to the heart of beast - Los Angeles. He eventually moved from law firms to in-house counsel at several studios. Mr. Dougherty was part of the legal departments at United Artists Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. He also worked in the business affairs department of Morgan Creek Productions. After the corporate takeover of MGM, Mr. Dougherty moved to the legal department of Twentieth Century Fox, where he became senior vice president of production/worldwide acquisition legal affairs. Before joining Loyola in 1997, Mr. Dougherty served as assistant general counsel for Turner Broadcasting System, responsible for Turner Pictures. Throughout much of his career in Los Angeles, Mr. Dougherty taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California. There he discovered his love of teaching. He started at Loyola as a visiting professor for one year and eventually made tenure. "I'd been teaching on the side and I liked the intellectual part of teaching, you have time to read cases and keep up with developments and really learn areas of the law that you don't have time for if you're practicing," he said. "In order to become a professional teacher you have to write. You have to teach, but really you have to write and publish." Mr. Dougherty wrote several law review articles. He published an article on copyright protection and the authorship of films in the U.C.L.A Law Review. He also published an article in the Columbia Journal of Arts & the Law about the conflict between freedom of speech and people's right to control how their likeness is used. "When you're practicing, it's hard to have time to write the kind of fat, scholarly type of writing that counts in academia," he said, adding that attorneys interested in academia should start publishing as soon as possible. "I was a little bit older because I'd been out playing in a rock band all that time and I was kind of in a hurry to get in the workforce," he said. "It didn't dawn on me that I would enjoy that (teaching), so I didn't do the normal career path. In retrospect, I should have thought about it. I love to teach." But Mr. Dougherty didn't ditch his guitar. He still performs with various bands. Lately, he's been jamming with a few lawyers since his last band lost its lead singer - Mr. Dougherty's daughter Jenna, who is also an entertainment attorney and now the lead singer of the all girl glam metal band, Vixen. Mr. Dougherty also put together a rock band at Loyola for a talent show. "We called ourselves the Tort Feezers," he said. "We spelled it Feezers - sort of the hard version, but that's not the correct spelling. There are some really talented students, some of them are former pros." For attorneys interested in entertainment careers, Mr. Dougherty urges them to move to Los Angeles, New York or Nashville. But he cautions students who think entertainment law will be purely fun. "The fact of the matter is it's law and you have to work hard to succeed," he said. "There's a certain amount of schmoozing and charm ability in this kind of an industry and practice, but ultimately people want somebody who is going to do good, careful work." Mr. Dougherty, who was president of the Los Angeles Copyright Society in 1996-97 and a Trustee of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. from 1997-2000, is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. Mr. Dougherty still practices law occasionally as special counsel to the New York based law firm Kaye Scholer and as a consultant to other firms. And he also teaches a week-long comparative law seminar with a German professor in Munich, Germany at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center. Any regrets about not following through with the rock and roll full time? No. Mr. Dougherty said he enjoys the balance of teaching fulltime and playing music on the side. While traveling he often sits in and jams with other musicians. Travel is another passion of Mr. Dougherty's. His father was in the Air Force and Mr. Dougherty moved frequently, attending 13 different schools in the United States, Japan and Hawaii, before it was a state. "I actually went to college thinking I was going to become a scientist," he said. "But the sciences weren't really taught that well at Yale at the time and I became more of a social scientist. I had been a debater and done sort of school politics and the law seemed like a good back up plan." He was so serious about making it as an attorney he said he was the only student to wear a suit on his first day of law school. Musicians, even good ones, are often broke. So Mr. Dougherty said he made the right choice following his interest in the law. Before attending law school, he considered becoming a psychologist. "But my hair was too long," he said. "I tried to get a job at one of the local psychiatric institutes but my hair was too long. They didn't want a hippie doing that. These days it doesn't matter."

Rate This Article 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Select    View top rated articles

Printable Version    PDF Version    Email to a Friend    Post A Comment    View Comment    Discuss

	Popular Tags
	honors  Loyola  Los Angeles  law  Arista Records  Yale  Kaye Scholer  New York  legal education  LawCrossing

Featured Testimonials

LawCrossing provides access to a lot of Lawfirms which really helps someone who wants to make a carrier in law.  Lev

Facts

LawCrossing Fact #6: LawCrossing’s database of job-seeking resources is always growing, ensuring that our selection will be greater each week.

"We want to hear your thoughts. Please comment on this article (below)!" Comments

Article ID: 976     Article Title: Jay Dougherty, Professor of Law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles Comment not found for this article. Comment

Facebook comments:

Enjoyed reading this article? Click here to sign up for News Wire, our weekly newsletter, and you'll receive articles just like this right in your inbox.

Enter your email address and start getting breaking law firm and legal news right now! Every Alert Alert once a day