Handel Named Adjunct Professor

Entertainment and digital media attorney Jonathan Handel has become an adjunct professor at UCLA School of Law. He will teach a class titled Entertainment Unions and Guilds.

The course focuses on legal analysis, along with discussions of union history, policy and politics, in order to illuminate the abstract language of guild contracts. Students will review topics ranging from on-screen and advertising credits to creative control, residual compensation, arbitration, strikes and stalemates, and new media.

Recent news events have made Handel's course timely and necessary. He will specifically spotlight the 2007-2009 Hollywood labor turmoil that consumed the Writers Guild of America (WGA), Directors Guild of America (DGA), Screen Actors Guild (SAG), American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), and IATSE and the Teamsters, the unions that represents most "below-the-line" workers.

Well known in the industry, Handel has been interviewed by local, national and international television, radio, print and online media outlets about entertainment, new media and Hollywood union issues. He has written articles on the conflict between content and technology companies and on trademarking movie titles. In 2009, Handel published a short book titled "How to Write LOI's and Term Sheets," and will be publishing his new book "Hollywood on Strike!" later this year. He writes a labor and new media law blog, "Digital Media Law", which focuses on the latest news in the law and business of digital media, traditional entertainment, intellectual property and technology.