I’m an Influencer: Do I Need a Lawyer?
Image by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
When it comes to social media and influencing, lawyers are probably the last people you think about. But…do you need a lawyer as an influencer? As you grow your influencer business, a lawyer can help you with protecting your intellectual property, understanding contracts, risk mitigation, and publicity rights.
Do I Need a Lawyer?
Many influencers might not think they need a lawyer and at first, you may not need one. However, as you begin to grow an influencer and start signing contracts, getting a lawyer is the right thing to do.
A lawyer that works with influencers will have your best interest in mind to help you protect your rights for yourself, your content, and your brand.
This post will talk through some areas of how a lawyer can help influencers—including some FTC guidelines, risk mitigation, contracts, IP rights, and publicity rights.
FTC Guidelines
You’ve heard about FTC guidelines and are probably compliant, but it’s always good to know exactly what it means. These laws for influencers are governed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC is put into place to be responsible for ensuring that the advertisements are truthful. Lawyers understand these laws the best because there are nuances to the law.
Risk Mitigation
A lawyer for a social media influencer is beneficial because they understand the daily challenges influencers face, which result from a growth in popularity of a particular influencer. It is the lawyer’s job to mitigate any legal risks that could arise for you and your brand including defamation, cancellation of contracts, getting money for deals, reputation, cancel culture, etc.
Contract Review
You’ve probably already signed some contracts as part of your influencing career. But do you actually know what you signed?
A social media lawyer can and will help you draft or review an endorsement agreement that is put into place to clearly outline the expectations from both you and the company. These contracts should speak to the use of your name and likeness, and by doing this, it guarantees that the company is not using your brand or reputation in a way that only pleases them.
A contract is a two-person relationship and it should be clear between the parties involved. Sponsorship and advertising contracts will include provisions that will indicate whether the company will provide the products and if there are any collaborations with other brands or influencers, as well as how you post and what to say when you post.
Some provisions will clearly state what is expected of you which is a positive thing because you always want to make sure it is clear what the company is being asked from you. A social media lawyer’s job is to watch out for these provisions and help make sure they are clear and put in place to protect you and your brand, so having a lawyer look them over would never hurt you, it would only benefit you.
Intellectual Property
There’s more a social media influencer lawyer can do than just draft and edit contracts. They can help with your intellectual property and protect it. All your posts, videos, blogs, and other online content is considered to be intellectual property that you make. It is done by getting trademark protection on your original hashtag, logos, and brand names, as well as securing copyright protection on your videos, photos, music, any artwork, or dance moves you created.
Doing so gives you (the owner) the exclusive rights to make copies of that creative work and make sure the credit goes to you, as the original content creator. The protection also protects your work from being used without your permission so others cant take what you posted, use it for their own good and steal it. While copyright protection does that, trademark protection will prevent others from using you and your brand in false advertisements or deceptive posts.
Publicity Rights
A lawyer can help protect your publicity rights in terms of your name and likeness. That way when you endorse a product, service, etc. then your rights are being licensed to the brand since it is your name, voice, face, and likeness that is endorsing the product. Without protecting your publicity rights your name and likeness and recognition can be used by others for commercial promotion. You’re going to want to hire a lawyer in order to protect your name and interests otherwise your name and interests will just be used by others for their own commercial gain.
Hiring
When you become big enough that you hire an assistant or contractor, you’re going to want to protect your brand with contracts. One may hire a virtual assistant to help them which at first wont be as expensive as an attorney will be, but the more you grow, hiring an attorney will be beneficial to you and your brand.
Attorneys can help with a wide variety of things that a virtual assistant either can not do, doesn’t have the knowledge of, or the authority to do so. Attorneys can help with confidentiality, in terms of having a NDA which is a non-disclosure agreement. A confidentially agreement is a binding contract where the person or business promises to treat specific information, promises, secrets, and not disclose those secrets or information to others without authorization.
Most influencers and celebrities get confidentiality agreements with people for many many reasons. Having one in place will protect you, your business and anything that goes on within it that you may not the rest of the world to know. Keeping you and your brand safe is important to the attorney you choose to hire.
Attorneys can draft with contracts that will protect yourself from any assistants or contractors you choose to hire or pair with. Doing so on your own may harm you because there are specific terms and provisions that may need to be in the agreement between the parties so it is clear, understood and legally enforceable. Any agreement that is put in place to protect the owner, you, is a great idea because there are some information you may not want exposed to the world.
Representation
When you’re big enough to need a manager or a management agency, we’ll work with the agency to ensure that you understand what you’re getting into and what the contracts and relationship entail. Kahn Media Law works with agencies to ensure that Influencers are getting what’s fair for their campaigns. We also help with brand negotiations and disputes that arise, like not getting paid for your work.
A lawyer who represents influencers is there to help with the daily challenges that are being faced, as well as mitigating the risks of being sued, taken advantage of, not being paid, not having full protection rights, following the FTC guidelines and more. We can also help keep you in line by focusing on your brand and your reputation to mitigate the risk of being sued by others.