Helen Saulnier 
Legal professional at Legislation Magazine sat down with Barbara Cohen, the new VP, Legal and Business Affairs, North The usa for International Literary Properties to explore her vocation and her new place. Cohen joined ILP in early January. She will direct the business affairs and contractual process for the company’s North American acquisition exercise, bringing her decades of publishing, legal and business affairs abilities. Cohen has far more than 30 decades of experience as a media attorney, which includes as a litigator in two pre-eminent New York law firms and in her senior in-property roles at guide and newspaper publishing businesses. Prior to establishing her own organization, Cohen was Vice President and General Counsel, Educational, at Oxford University Push, the largest university press in the globe.
AALM: What are you most excited about in your new purpose with ILP?
BC: From the first time I heard about ILP’s small business, I have been intrigued, and that interest has only grown the more I have realized. If I experienced to name a person matter I’m most fired up about now that I’m a component of ILP, it would be staying part of a group of clever, dedicated folks from whom I’m now studying a lot as we function with each other on ILP’s expanding portfolio of fantastic literary attributes.
AALM: Notify us what to start with drew you to the authorized business.
BC: The first issue that drew me to the legal business is not what is stored me in it. I experienced a normal perception that I required to go to graduate college, and I landed on legislation university by a approach of elimination. But what is stored me endlessly interested in my do the job was my chance discovery of media law – especially supporting authors, journalists, and publishers and their collaborative operate.
AALM: How did you locate your way to working in the e book/creating sector?
BC: Looking again on my profession, it could possibly seem that I followed a route. But for the most element I just followed my intestine as alternatives came up – and I have been extremely fortunate. After my to start with 12 months of regulation university, I felt doubtful about irrespective of whether becoming a lawyer was for me, but I was sure about my adore of books, so I moved to New York Metropolis and, through a assistance desired advert, acquired a career in the publicity office at Viking Penguin. A couple months in, a legal concern came up and, with a person 12 months of regulation college under my belt, I was requested to talk with the company’s outdoors law firm (Martin Garbus, then of Frankfurt, Garbus, Kurnit, Klein & Selz). I was struck by how significantly he seemed to appreciate the get the job done he was doing, and that propelled me again to regulation university, energized by the target of turning into a media lawyer.
AALM: Inform us about your early job as a litigator in non-public practice. What prompted you to transition to an in-home position?
BC: A lot of attorneys complain about lifetime as a to start with-yr affiliate but, extensive hrs aside, I had a amazing experience at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. I benefitted from good education, the two formal and on-the-job, and designed pals for life, as I did when an possibility arrived up to be a part of what was then Lankenau Kovner Kurtz & Outten (now Davis Wright Tremaine). I acquired considerable experience staying element of a small agency helmed by the media bar’s preeminent legal professionals and, ended up it not for the needs of life as a litigator, I would most likely even now be there these days.
What prompted me to transition to an in-home role was a pal noticing that I appeared a bit exhausted and then connecting me to a friend of hers who was on the lookout to break up her individual in-house position upon returning from maternity leave. (This is the form of very good luck I have had!)
AALM: Notify us about your time with Oxford College Press and your other in-household roles.
BC: One particular of the very best items about being in-dwelling is the in no way-ending assortment of concerns that appear up. The occupation is never ever dull! At OUP, no two times were alike and could contain any wide variety of issues, from advising on copyright, trademark, and other intellectual home troubles to negotiating and drafting publishing, Book distribution, licensing, and other contracts to functioning with editors and authors on pre-publication assessment of manuscripts and multimedia content to supervising litigation issues to doing the job on company acquisitions and past. All of this in a quickly switching publishing ecosystem, with a shift from print to digital and big tech getting a crucial participant. And what an honor it was to have been component of Oxford University Press. The flip facet of a hardly ever-boring job is that it can be draining, so following 14 a long time I was all set for a improve.
AALM: Inform us a bit about your encounter functioning your personal organization.
BC: Forward of leaving Oxford University Press, I planned on supplying myself a little bit of respiratory place to figure out what my up coming act would be. I finished up managing my own company not by system but by chance. Before I remaining OUP, a friend who worked in-home at a media company requested if I could enable go over for one of her colleagues, who would be away for considerably of the 1st thirty day period right after I’d be leaving OUP. I jumped at the probability and began by undertaking pre-publication legal review of magazine article content – operate that I had performed previously in my career. Undertaking the do the job, I was reminded of how considerably I like that sort of perform so I just saved executing it, extensive earlier the prepared-for month or two. And, energized by the work, I commenced undertaking work for other shoppers, including ebook publishers and authors.
AALM: Explain to us about some of your mentors and the most effective lessons they taught you.
BC: I occur from a big relatives and my initial and most crucial mentors ended up and keep on to be my siblings. I have also benefitted from my expert mentors, from whom I’ve figured out not just about the legislation, but about getting a law firm and a specialist balancing of do the job and loved ones. When new chances have occur alongside or challenges arrive up, I know that I can generally count on these clever counselors. Extra than something in specific that any of them has explained, I’ve learned a great deal just by viewing them in motion.
AALM: Looking back again on your experienced occupation to day, is there anything you’d change if you could?
BC: Looking again, the only matter I would improve would be prioritizing using my holiday and expending even additional time traveling with my family, exploring new destinations and enduring other cultures alongside one another with them.
AALM: What are some of your hobbies outdoors of the business? How do you unwind?
BC: A single of my hobbies outdoors of the business is what’s at the coronary heart of my get the job done: examining! I am also a amateur gardener and, in the spring and summer season, I devote as substantially time in the backyard garden as I can.
AALM: Who are some of your beloved authors? Have you had a probability to fulfill any of them or operate on any jobs involving their do the job?
BC: I have had the honor of working with quite a few fantastic authors. I will not title any of them due to the fact I couldn’t title them all!
Outside of the authors I have worked with, it also feels difficult to title my favorites, but I’ll consider. The record would incorporate favorites from my childhood, which include Maurice Sendak (In the Night time Kitchen area, The place the Wild Issues Are, and the books in the Nutshell Library), Randall Jarrell (The Animal Household and The Bat-Poet, equally illustrated by Maurice Sendak), Natalie Babbit (The Look for for Mouth watering), Joan Aiken (Black Hearts at Battersea and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase), Roald Dahl (The Superb Mr. Fox) … through university favorites, together with Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The After and Upcoming King by T.H. White, To Destroy a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, The Tales of John Cheever … and up to the current, which include just about nearly anything by Jim Harrison (Warlock and Legends of the Slide are individual favorites), Yann Martel’s The Lifetime of Pi, Their Eyes Were being Looking at God by Zora Neale Hurston, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, Tinkers by Paul Harding, Waterland by Graham Swift, and Blindness by Jose Saramago (the best guide I want I’d never read through – it is so darkish!).
Article Views:
