Net Spurs Need for Cyber Lawyers
Is someone reproducing your corporate logo on the Net? Downloading personal information you thought was private? Defaming you in an electronic gossip column? Then you may need a cyber lawyer, one of the most dynamic professions in law today.
As Web sites proliferate and millions of individuals and businesses go online, demand for lawyers versed in the emerging field of Internet law has grown correspondingly, providing a good living to attorneys such as Stephen Spataro.
Specializing in intellectual copyright, Spataro is a relative old-timer in high-tech law. He began representing software developers in the mid-1980s, grew alongside the industry and now spends almost half his time on cyber law.
That includes representing Web site owners, content suppliers, developers, designers and visual artists. Legal experts say top performers in this field combine a grounding in traditional telecommunications law with a technical understanding of the Net.
Spataro, for instance, is well-versed in standard legal fields such as intellectual copyright, trademark infringement, defamation and invasion of privacy.
But to succeed as an Internet lawyer, “you have to immerse yourself in the technology, understand HTML code and how Web sites are put together,” Spataro says. “You have to learn about coding and borders and frames. Linking. All the hot issues. Within the last two years, there’s a body of law that’s starting to develop.”
Matthew Spitzer, a USC law professor who directs the university’s Center for Communication Law and Policy, says he and fellow professors are re-tailoring their classes, applying the basic structure of existing law to the Internet to reflect changing industry needs.
“Someone who comes out, understands the technology and is tooled up in telecommunications is going be in demand,” Spitzer says. This is true throughout urban America but especially in Washington, where there is a lot of FCC regulatory work to be done, he says.
At Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, attorney Rex Heinke says there’s no such thing as an Internet lawyer but that attorneys in many different fields now find themselves doing cyber law.
“It’s more training on-the-job than anything,” Heinke says. “‘Almost every business and many individuals are involved in the Internet and thus have all the legal problems that result from conducting business on the Internet.”
Legal experts say Internet skills don’t usually boost starting salaries, but do give attorneys an edge that can vault them into six figures annually.
Spataro, for his part, did high-tech legal work for an Orange County firm right out of law school in 1978 but went into private practice two years later and never looked back. Today he heads up Spataro & Associates in Santa Monica and has two attorneys working for him.
He learns mostly on the job, using resources such as the U.S. copyright office to keep abreast of emerging Internet issues. Spataro doesn’t find Internet law seminars very useful--”It’s hard to find good ones,” he says.
But he grapples daily with issues such as how to copyright a Web site that’s constantly changing, who owns computer-generated artwork and whether certain methods of linking infringe a copyright.
“I like working on the cutting edge of the law,” Spataro says.
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Freelance writer Denise Hamilton can be reached at hamilton@loop.com.
