Legal and business counsel for creators, production companies, talent, and creative entrepreneurs building valuable IP, negotiating meaningful deals, and turning creative work into businesses that last.
Or set a time to talk →
A Los Angeles practice for people whose creative work has become a business, and for the companies built around that work.
Two kinds of clients. Established creators and creator-led businesses negotiating partnerships, licensing IP, hiring teams, and building real companies around an audience. Production companies and creative businesses that need senior business and legal affairs capability without adding another full-time executive.
The work also continues for writers, directors, showrunners, on-camera talent, and the executives and representatives who negotiate on their behalf.
It spans brand and licensing deals, development and production, talent and representation agreements, IP ownership and exploitation, and the corporate and commercial contracting every operating business runs on.
The premise is simple. Understanding the business is what makes the legal advice useful. The goal is to serve as counsel and as a working part of how decisions get made.
Most people do not start with a retainer. They start with one agreement that matters, read properly before it is signed, by someone who has seen the same terms from the other side of the table.
Call or text and we will set a time to talk it through.
One significant agreement, usually a brand, sponsorship, or licensing deal, reviewed before you commit.
Please do not send the agreement before we have spoken.
A clear read and a set of redlines on the agreements a business signs every week.
Please do not send the agreement before we have spoken.
Larger matters and ongoing work are scoped and quoted before anything begins.
Brand deals are only the beginning. Eric represents established creators as they negotiate partnerships, protect and license IP, hire teams, develop entertainment projects, launch companies and products, and turn a working creative platform into a business that holds value.
Have a deal in front of you right now? That is what First Deal is for.
Brand partnerships, sponsorships, platform agreements, and commercial collaborations, priced against everything the deal is actually asking for rather than the number in the first email.
Ownership of your content, your name, image, and likeness, and the marks behind the brand. Usage and licensing with defined scope and duration, including AI and synthetic media rights before someone else defines them for you.
Management, agency, and representation agreements. Employees, contractors, editors, producers, and collaborators, engaged on terms that keep the work and the IP where they belong.
Entity structure, operating agreements, equity, partnerships, and investment. The company behind the audience, and the agreements that govern how it runs and who owns what.
Film, television, podcast, publishing, consumer products, merchandise, and adaptation. Licensing a format and an audience into new formats without giving away more than the first deal requires.
Exclusivity, royalties, contingent compensation, backend, reversion, and termination. The terms that decide what the business is worth later rather than what it pays this quarter.
Most creators start with one agreement that matters. Some never need more than that. Others end up running a company that needs senior legal and business affairs judgment every week. Either is a reasonable place to begin.
One significant agreement, read properly before you sign it. A flat fee, and the fastest way to find out whether this is the kind of counsel you want in the room next time.
For creators signing deals regularly, building a team, and licensing IP. Counsel who already knows the business, the existing commitments, and what was given away last time, rather than a scramble every time paper arrives.
For established creator-led companies with real deal flow, a team, and IP worth managing. Senior legal and business affairs leadership without hiring a full-time general counsel.
Not every matter fits a flat fee. Ongoing work and larger transactions are scoped and quoted before anything begins.
More than a decade inside entertainment companies, negotiating with talent, producers, creators, and the agents, managers, and lawyers who represent them. Studio and network paper, read and written from the side that drafted it.
That is usually the missing piece. Not a lawyer who can spot a bad clause, but someone who knows what the company across the table is trying to get, why a provision is in there, where there is room, and which points are worth spending leverage on.
Eric built the practice to put that kind of counsel within reach of creators and independent companies, rather than leaving it available only to the businesses that already have it in-house. He has built and run legal departments from the inside, so he also knows what good looks like operationally, not just on the page.
Advice is proportional to the actual risk. The job is to get the deal done on defensible terms, not to produce a list of reasons it cannot be done.
For production companies and creative businesses with real deal flow and no in-house legal function, or one that is stretched. Ongoing coverage, institutional knowledge, and a single point of continuity as the slate and the company grow.
Options and purchases, underlying rights, first-look and overall deals, production services, co-production and co-financing, and guild compliance.
Personal services agreements for writers, showrunners, directors, producers, and on-camera talent, including credit, approvals, and contingent compensation.
Chain of title, life rights, book-to-screen, franchise development, merchandising, and trademark, structured to hold value across the deals that follow.
Multi-territory rights grants, windowing, exclusivity, holdbacks, revenue share, and delivery across subscription, ad-supported, and free ad-supported platforms.
Formation and governance, equity and financing, partnerships and joint ventures, acquisitions, diligence, vendor and technology agreements, and data terms.
Templates, negotiation playbooks, intake and approval workflows, and the legal operations a fast-moving team needs so routine deals stop becoming bottlenecks.
The full deal lifecycle from pitch to delivery: options and purchases, underlying rights, first-look and overall deals, development and production services agreements, co-production and co-financing structures, and guild compliance across WGA, SAG-AFTRA, DGA, and IATSE.
Personal services agreements for writers, showrunners, directors, producers, and on-camera talent. Creator and influencer deals. Executive employment, overall, severance, and exit negotiations. Credit, contingent compensation, approvals, and the terms that get skipped and later matter.
Book-to-screen and life rights, chain of title, franchise development, merchandising, publishing tie-ins, trademark, and anti-piracy enforcement. Rights structured to hold value across every window and format, including the deals that follow the one in front of you.
Domestic and multi-territory rights grants across subscription, ad-supported, and free ad-supported platforms. Windowing, exclusivity, holdbacks, revenue share, and delivery, plus the platform and audience-facing risk that travels with digital distribution.
Sponsorship, integration, and co-promotion agreements between brands, agencies, platforms, and producers. Talent and creator participation, usage and exclusivity windows, approvals, and the licensing terms on both sides of a branded slate.
Formation, governance, equity and financing, strategic partnerships and joint ventures, acquisitions and investments, diligence, vendor and sales agreements, SaaS and technology licenses, data processing agreements under CCPA and GDPR, and website terms and privacy policies.
Executive-level legal judgment without a full-time hire: day-to-day counsel to founders and creative leadership, cross-functional deal management, supervision of outside specialists, and a single point of continuity as the company grows.
Contract templates, negotiation playbooks, intake and approval workflows, and signature and records processes. Built once so a fast-moving team can execute routine deals without legal becoming the bottleneck.
Work for studios and streamers, production companies, networks, publishers, brands, creators, and the executives and founders on the other side of those deals.
Matters are described by type and structure. Client names, counterparties, project titles, and deal terms are omitted.
Eric spent more than a decade inside entertainment companies, negotiating the deals that creators, producers, talent, and their representatives were sitting across from. He founded the practice to bring that experience directly to their side of the table.
He is a California attorney and business affairs executive whose work covers talent, production, rights, financing, and corporate deals across film, television, animation, digital, and branded entertainment.
Most recently he was Senior Vice President of Business & Legal Affairs at Lion Forge Entertainment, where he was the company's first legal hire and led business and legal affairs across live-action, animation, and digital projects, from acquisition through delivery and global exploitation. Before that he spent five years at Imagine Entertainment, ultimately as Vice President, Business & Legal Affairs and Corporate Counsel, working across a high-volume scripted slate for major streamers and networks alongside the company's corporate and commercial contracting. He began in business affairs at WarnerMedia and Turner, supporting scripted, unscripted, animation, and new media projects for TNT, TBS, and HBO Max Originals.
The Law Office of Eric D. Kessler exists to give creators and creative companies access to the kind of business and legal counsel that normally sits inside an established entertainment company, at a scale and cost that fits how they actually operate. He enjoys the building part as much as the deal part.
Notes on brand deals, ownership, licensing, representation, and the economics that decide what a creative business is worth later. Written and published by Eric.
WGA, DGA and SAG-AFTRA minimums for the current contract year, arranged the way a deal gets made rather than the way the guilds publish them. Searchable, with every figure sourced to the guild’s own schedule.
Open the reference →Where should you produce your project? Enter a budget once and compare 56 jurisdictions on estimated net production cost rather than headline credit rate, after caps, exclusions, monetization cost, timing and the cost of moving the production. Every figure traces to a program rule and a source.
Open the tool →Call or text. Tell Eric what you are working on and where the pressure is. He will tell you what kind of support fits, and what it would take, before anything begins.
Monthly fractional General Counsel or business affairs support for companies that need continuity, coverage, and a single point of institutional knowledge.
A specific deal, a slate, a financing, an acquisition, or a set of templates. Scoped and priced against the work rather than the clock.
Stepping into a business affairs or General Counsel seat during a gap, a growth stage, or a transaction, and building what should stay behind.
A few details help Eric point the first conversation in the right direction.