Vice President, Business & Legal Affairs

Job Description

Overview and Responsibilities

The BET Business and Legal Affairs team supports the business and legal needs across all of the BET-branded platforms and businesses, including, but not limited to, the development and production of scripted, unscripted, music, digital and live event/tentpole programming and all related advertising, sponsorship, marketing and promotion. All executives in the department work hand-in-hand with the creative, development, programming, production, talent, finance, publicity, ad sales and marketing teams, as well as many other departments across BET and ViacomCBS. The Vice President of Business & Legal Affairs is an experienced mid-to-senior level attorney role currently intended to provide day-to-day support across all of BET's branded platforms and businesses, with a primary focus on the development and production of unscripted, music, live event and tentpole programming. This role is envisioned to directly support the specials and music programming teams, BET's events and experience business and the unscripted development and production teams.
• Structuring, drafting and negotiating development, talent and production-related agreements (e.g., producer, production services, high-level host and on-camera talent agreements; appearance, venue and location releases; music and clip licenses; co-production deals and rights acquisitions; format licenses; program licenses, etc.).
• Counseling in-house client groups on a wide variety of legal issues and corporate policies that may arise and managing corporate compliance with ViacomCBS and BET Networks policies and procedures.
• Handling day-to-day production legal work for original programming (live events, music programming, specials, episodic series and marketing/promotion/digital content).
• Reviewing and approving legal contracts for execution by production and/or management.
• Leading and engaging in complex and strategic deal discussions and researching appropriate business and legal issues.
• Providing complex risk assessment for production-related matters; assessing, devising and advising risk management practices for the businesses and implementing corporate policies.
• Performing other day-to-day business and legal affairs-related tasks as needed and assigned by senior executives in the department.
• Detailed understanding and comprehensive working knowledge of television industry agreements, guild and union regulations (WGA, DGA and SAG-AFTRA), contract law and intellectual property rights.
• Demonstrate significant unscripted deal-making experience.
• Analyze complex fact patterns and devise creative solutions that allow executives to implement their creative vision while minimizing overall legal and business risk.
• Substantive and practical experience running production legal for live event programming.

Basic Qualifications
• Member in good standing of the New York and/or California Bar(s) with 7-10 years of experience (ideally with experience in a network, studio, streaming, entertainment law firm or production company environment).
• Thorough understanding of entertainment industry customs and practices and ability to effectively negotiate and interact with agents, managers and outside attorneys and lead internal teams.

Additional Qualifications
• Multi-task under pressure, manage a varied, high-volume workload efficiently and operate autonomously within corporate parameters.
• Experience assuming a leadership role in client relationships and decision making.
• Mastered capability for legal research, analysis and reasoning.
• Excellent drafting, negotiation and communication (written and verbal) skills.
• Negotiate with third parties within established parameters.
• Established industry relationships and a proactive approach to working with agents, managers, lawyers and other entertainment industry professionals.
• Ability to build strong internal relationships and effectively advise internal teams under conditions of uncertainty, pressure and/or high risk.
• Generate strong client satisfaction through critical thinking.
• Ability to independently handle transactions from inception through completion.
• Professional demeanor and strong interpersonal skills; ability to work with all types of personalities and work styles.
• Established track record of exercising solid business judgment, meeting deadlines and working independently.
• Management experience desired, as this role may be charged with supervising and/or training junior executives, contract managers and/or legal assistants.

Paramount is an equal opportunity employer (EOE) including disability/vet.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-rvyq4w-13-58-213-82-42 in your application.