Read, negotiate, and own every entertainment deal you sign

If you've ever flipped to the last page of a contract, skimmed the signature line, and thought I'll trust that my lawyer caught anything important — I built this course for you.\n\nThat instinct isn't laziness. It's what happens when the industry never actually teaches you how deals work. You were hired for your creative vision, your relationships, your taste, or your hustle — not your ability to parse indemnification language or spot a problematic reserved rights clause. And for a while, that was fine. But somewhere along the way, you realized that the people in the room who understand the deal — who can read the room, push back on the right clause, and know when a "standard" term is anything but — those people have a different kind of power. This course gives you that power.\n\nWhat I've built here isn't a law school overview and it isn't a glossary of terms. It's the business affairs logic that actually drives entertainment deal-making, taught the way a sharp colleague would explain it to you over a working lunch — with real deal structures, real clause examples, and honest explanations of whose interests each provision is designed to protect. We start with how to read any contract document and end with you building your own repeatable framework for evaluating every deal that comes across your desk.\n\nAlong the way, we go deep on the things that actually matter: how rights and IP ownership get carved up and why it matters who controls them; how option agreements, talent deals, and licensing structures are built and where the leverage lives; why backend participation can be worth everything or nothing depending on four words in a definitions clause; and how to negotiate not just harder, but smarter — knowing which points are worth a fight and which ones signal that you understand the game.\n\nThe goal isn't to turn you into a lawyer. It's to make you the kind of professional your lawyer loves working with — and the kind your counterpart across the table has to take seriously. Come ready to work. The deals are waiting.