Associate's Video Game Practice Idea Scores Big
Last year, young lawyer Shawn Foust had a proposal for one of the senior partners at the white-shoe Sheppard Mullin.
This idealist practicing in Century City was excited to meld two things he loved, games and the law. So he proposed an entire practice to the video game industry.
A year later, Foust is living his dream, coordinating a team of 20 lawyers that handle mergers, licensing contracts and other deals related to the video game business, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Turns out that Foust, 26, had excellent timing. The Times notes that lawyers throughout California are retooling their entertainment practices to cater to the game industry, which is expected to generate nearly $50 billion in global revenue this year. There’s even a law blog on the topic, Law of the Game.
“There’s tax work, litigation, risk management, immigration, labor—the list goes on and on,” Seth Steinberg is quoted saying. Last year, as Foust was pushing his big idea, Steinberg left his position as general counsel of George Lucas’ video game publisher, LucasArts, to hang his shingle in San Francisco, gearing his practice toward the game industry.
Here’s Foust’s take: “For a long time, video games flew under the radar. That’s no longer the case. The number of consumer class-action lawsuits filed against game companies has gone up pretty dramatically over the last three or four years. The pot [of] money is now big enough for plaintiffs attorneys to become interested.”
