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February 02, 2024 Feature

Letter From The Chair

Mark Tratos

Dear Fellow Forum Members,

Happy 2024! I write to share some exciting news and updates about our Forum activities for the next year. There are three important developments which we hope will be of interest to everyone: our mentorship program; the Forum’s Spring AI CLE; and our Fall event collaboration with the Section on Intellectual Property.

Last year, we kicked off the Forum’s first formal mentorship program at our Fall Conference in October. Scott Bain and Chardae Davis are leading the effort to coordinate mentor and mentee activities developing and implementing the inaugural program. We hope to have special mentor/mentee events at each of the Forum’s meetings and have an opportunity to share our mentees’ experience with Forum members so that we can broaden the reach of the Forum by more inclusively working with both law students, young lawyers and lawyers switching career focuses. In future editions of this publications, we will include stories from both mentors and mentees about our growing program.

Our 2024 conference is slated to take place in Los Angeles, April 11th and 12th. The program will be presented in conjunction with the Beverly Hills Bar and Southwestern School of Law. Ken Freundlich and Ilan Haimoff are chairing the conference which will focus upon the impact of AI on the sports and entertainment industries. The CLE program will be presented at Southwestern on April 12th. The GC meeting will occur at Ilan Haimoff’s offices on Thursday, April 11th. We’re developing an exception group of speakers for the program. (The GC is encouraged to book reservations at The Conrad downtown across from Disney Hall.)

Finally, and importantly, I’m pleased to share that our Fall program in Las Vegas will be presented with our colleagues in the Intellectual Property Section of the ABA. At my invitation, the IP section’s leadership has agreed that we should begin an inaugural program where the IP Section and the E&S Forum can begin programming that runs parallel tracks with joint plenary sessions and shared networking, meals, and receptions. So much of the law that impact the entertainment and sports industries involve IP and the licensing, enforcement, and litigation of IP that it made sense for our respective groups to find opportunities to collaborate. The E&S chairs for the Fall event are Gary Greenstein and Kate Porter, and we know that our programming will be exciting and worthwhile with our expanded format and increased size.

We hope that our efforts to bring new opportunities, activities, and members into the Forum will prove as exciting to you as they are to us and that you will dedicate some time and effort in growing the Forum and our role in the ABA and our respective industries.

Excited to be working for you all.

Kindest regards,

Mark Tratos

Founding Shareholder, Las Vegas Office

Chair, ABA Entertainment & Sports Law Forum

Greenberg Traurig, LLP

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Mark Tratos