Associate, Legal Affairs

Job Description:

At Warner Music Group, we’re a global collective of music makers and music lovers, tech innovators and inspired entrepreneurs, game-changing creatives and passionate team members. Here, we know that each talent makes our collective bolder and brighter. We are guided by four core principles that underpin everything we do across all our diverse businesses:

• Music is Everything: Music is our passion, and we can never get enough. Tastes, trends, and tech will change, but great artists and songwriters will always be our driving force.

• Global Growth, Local Expertise: Music is a global language. Through communication and collaboration, our success can come from anywhere and translate everywhere.

• Innovation and Insight: Pushing the boundaries requires the best information and the boldest imagination. We use both to create the future.

• Empowered by People: Like the artists we serve and the music they make, our differences make us stronger. This is a place where every talent can belong and build a career. We remain committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

We know it fosters a culture where you can truly belong, contribute, and grow. We encourage applications from people of any age, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity, disability, veteran status, and any other characteristic or identity. Consider a career at WMG and get the best of both worlds - an innovative global music company that retains the creative spirit of a nimble independent.

Job Title: Associate, Legal Affairs
 
A little bit about our team:
Warner Music’s Center of Excellence opened in 2017 and is the home to the financial, legal, and administrative functions that provide critical support and best-in-class services to our US Recorded Music and Publishing businesses. The Nashville Center embodies the innovative and creative spirit that stems from the company’s deep history in nurturing entrepreneurial thinking and artist focused innovation, enabling our employees to develop a wide range of skills through cross-function collaboration and development opportunities.

As part of the Global Catalog Business and Legal Affairs team, the Legal Department is responsible for enforcing WMG’s rights in the recorded music catalog repertoire controlled by its U.S. record labels, managing litigations involving WMG’s recorded music rights in conjunction with WMG’s corporate litigation in-house counsel, fielding inquiries and claims from third parties, researching WMG’s recorded music catalog rights, filing applications to register copyrights in and to WMG’s recorded music repertoire, and managing WMG’s relationships with the labor unions with which WMG’s U.S. record labels have collective bargaining agreements.

Members of the Legal Department work closely with employees in the Business Affairs, Finance, Production, Operations, New Media, and Marketing departments of each label client to fulfill the above-referenced responsibilities for the recordings and records those labels release.

Your role:
This position will conduct general legal research pertaining to WMG’s rights in its existing recording agreements and advise various internal business units regarding those rights and recording agreements. In addition, this role will field, research, answer, and resolve inquiries from both internal business units and artists, producers, and other third parties. Lastly, this position assists with the management of incoming claims and the enforcement of WMG’s recorded music rights. As a Global Catalog Business and Legal Affairs Associate, this role will deal predominantly with WMG’s catalog repertoire and Rhino label.

Here you’ll get to:

• Perform general catalog legal research pertaining to WMG’s rights in its existing recording agreements and other contracts, including reviewing, analyzing, and interpreting various provisions in the recording agreements and other contracts at the request of various internal business units such as the royalty, publishing, and revenue assurance teams

• Field, research, answer, and resolve incoming inquiries from recording artists, producers, and other third party royalty participants and their representatives

• Field, research, and resolve incoming legal claims from recording artists, other third parties and their representatives, including, without limitation, accounting claims, copyright claims, sample claims, and reversion-of-rights claims

• Communicate the relevant details of the aforementioned incoming inquiries and claims to the relevant internal clients and work with other attorneys in the Legal Department to secure the approval of such clients over the resolution of such matters

• Draft legal documents (e.g., cease and desist letters, indemnification le