Attorneys in the music business play a powerful role. Ken Hertz and Fred Goldring, now with many superstar clients, have risen at bullet speed.

By MARLA MATZER

April 20, 1997 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

In their sun-drenched Beverly Hills offices, Ken Hertz and Fred Goldring spend much of their day doing what other attorneys do: reviewing documents, talking to clients, holding conference calls to discuss deals.

Except their clients are superstar musicians like Alanis Morissette and Seal, and the deals they’re discussing include the particulars of the Fleetwood Mac reunion later this year. In the evening, they may have dinner with a client or club-hop to catch a couple of upcoming bands they represent. While driving there in his Saab 900 Turbo, Hertz might listen to some of the tapes sent by young bands hoping to find representation.

The two are founding partners of the music practice at Hansen, Jacobson, Teller & Hoberman, a boutique law firm. In less than eight years, they’ve become known as two of perhaps half a dozen top young music attorneys representing hot talent.

Their rise has been unusually swift. “It’s actually incredible. I don’t remember it ever happening before where a firm came so far so fast,” says Randy Phillips, president of Red Ant records in L.A. “[John] Branca, [Allen] Grubman, Joel Katz in Atlanta--those practices took 15 to 20 years to build, and it was slow going in the beginning,” says Phillips--a former lawyer--reeling off the music attorneys who hit it big in the 1980s.

Attorneys play an unusually powerful role in the music business.

In the movie and television industry, it’s talent agents who exert powerful influence by representing top stars, writers and directors. But agents never became as powerful in music. Popular acts generally negotiate long-term deals with single companies and thus have less need for agents to find them work. In the music business, attorneys often act as talent scouts, agents and deal makers. And for young acts, they’ve become kingmakers.

To build their practices, music lawyers must be good judges of talent. They make nothing on the many clients whose careers are still developing. It’s not unusual for 75% of a music firm’s acts to be bringing in no money. Morissette, for instance, was a Hertz and Goldring client for two years before she signed a record deal.

At least half a dozen bands per week send the lawyers their demo tapes, looking for a similar break. Hertz and Goldring listen to them, but they sign very few.

With top-selling acts like Morissette and Boyz II Men, Hertz and Goldring are probably in the company of top entertainment attorneys--the two wouldn’t disclose their pay--earning seven-figure incomes.

As is common for entertainment lawyers at specialty firms, the attorneys take a percentage rather than bill by the hour. That commonly means 5% of an artist’s overall earnings or of a particular deal, depending on factors that include how critical a role the firm has played in developing the client’s career.

The attorneys’ reputation was solidified in 1996, which began with client Morissette at the top of the Billboard charts and ended with client No Doubt in the same position. Morissette swept the Grammy Awards and sold more records than anyone else with “Jagged Little Pill,” her debut album on Madonna’s Maverick Records. As a bonus, rapper-turned-actor Will Smith, who gives the attorneys much of the credit for guiding his career transition, starred in the year’s top-grossing film, “Independence Day.”

And Hertz and Goldring doubled their practice size by bringing in lawyers Seth Lichtenstein and Jonathan Haft--like Hertz and Goldring, neither is over 40. They brought with them a number of young acts, including the Eels and No Doubt, as well as more established ones such as Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Keith Richards.

This year is shaping up very well, despite the current music industry slump: No Doubt’s been riding high on the charts and the airwaves. Ten clients were up for 15 Grammys at this year’s ceremony; Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter walked away with Grammys for composing and arranging. The firm is representing Fleetwood Mac for one of the most eagerly awaited reunions in recent years.

According to Hertz and Goldring, it was slow going at first. In 1989, Hertz, a Los Angeles native, left a job with the legal department at the Walt Disney Co. to set up a music specialty practice for Hansen Jacobson, which was known for its film and television practice. He took a second mortgage on his house to help support himself.

Goldring, who’d become friendly with Hertz while doing outside legal work for Disney at New York’s Grubman, Indursky & Schindler, jumped at the chance to join forces with Hertz. He sublet his New York apartment and landed in Los Angeles without furniture or car. Neither attorney had clients. They shared a single office, even a single desk (custom-made, 6 feet by 6 feet) for the first three years, forming a strong partnership out of necessity.

“We were just out there playing in traffic,” Goldring recalls. “We’d go to every industry function just to meet people. Both of us were calling up everyone we ever knew, or heard of, and having breakfast, lunch and dinner with different people every day.”

That persistence was rewarded quickly, and by people Hertz and Goldring never would have expected. While working for Disney, Hertz and Goldring had negotiated tough deals with Hancock and the group Fine Young Cannibals, who at the time shared a manager.

“The manager really felt he’d gotten hammered, so he was the last person I expected would ever come to me to do business again, but he brought those major clients to me,” Hertz said with a chuckle.

Hertz in particular has a widespread reputation for being tough. Though he usually comes across as affable, in negotiation he is known to be the aggressive bad cop to Goldring’s good cop. Red Ant’s Phillips, like many others in the business who praised Hertz and Goldring, said that he’s been “beaten up” by them on deals. But, as he and others point out, one doesn’t pay an attorney to be nice.

“Ken’s a tenacious negotiator, an absolute bulldog. Fred really has the whole artist’s sensibility and is passionate about music,” says MCA Records President Jay Boberg, who’s known Goldring for 15 years and Hertz for almost that long. He adds: “When Fred said he was going to pair up with Ken, I thought there were a lot of possibilities in that. They’re like ham and eggs.”

Some adversaries and competitors in the business grumble privately that Hertz and Goldring are self-promoters and that they take clients from other attorneys. And although Hertz and Goldring claim to shun the spotlight, they employ a personal publicist.

Hertz, however, denies that the firm is overly aggressive in its search for clients.

“I’m sure there have been cases where after the fact, another attorney is not happy because their former client chose to hire us,” he says. “When a band is looking for new representation, it’s like looking for a new job; they often want to be discreet. We are very aggressive, but we don’t pursue other people’s clients who haven’t first expressed an interest in changing their representation.”

Personal manager John Dukakis (son of the former presidential candidate) praises Hertz and Goldring’s “youthful, hungry” quality and genuine love of music. “That and their senses of humor play well with talent,” says Dukakis, whose Southpaw Entertainment manages Hertz and Goldring clients Boyz II Men and Brownstone. “But they don’t try to be like talent; they recognize what their role is. . . . They understand that this is a service business, and there are a lot of services they don’t train you for in law school.”

Will Smith agrees. “The great thing [about Hertz and Goldring] is their understanding and vision of the whole picture. They’re always looking at new opportunities.”

In Smith’s case, that involved introducing Smith to Benny Medina and Quincy Jones, who as producers launched Smith on TV as the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”; and to John Landis, who directed Smith in a segment for a Disney special and afterward helped Smith to make contacts with other big directors.

Longtime client Hancock, a musician-composer, says Hertz and Goldring have always looked out for his interests. A common complaint against entertainment-industry attorneys is that they’re attentive only to those acts and deals that make them lots of money.

“These guys have been with me when I’ve had a manager [and] when I haven’t,” Hancock says.

Hertz suggests that pure luck played a big part of their success: “I think in a way we were at the right place at the right time. Plus, we were simply too inexperienced to know what couldn’t be done. We asked for things that people didn’t usually get, and we got them.”

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Other Top Music Industry Attorneys

Established:

Allen Grubman (Grubman, Indursky & Schindler, New York)

Clients include: Madonna, Bruce Springsteen

John Branca, Gary Stiffelman (Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca & Fischer, Los Angeles)

Clients include: Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, Interscope Records

Donald Passman (Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown, Los Angeles)

Clients include: R.E.M., Janet Jackson

Joel Katz (Katz, Smith & Cohen, Atlanta)

Clients include: Toni Braxton, Jimmy Buffett

John Frankenheimer (Loeb & Loeb, Los Angeles)