Episode 26: You Must Protect Your Business When Working With Freelancers, with Sharon Toerek

Sharon Toerek is Principal of Toerek Law, where she focuses her national law practice on helping professionals in the advertising, marketing and creative services industries protect and monetize their intellectual capital, and manage the legal implications of their marketing and advertising work.

Sharon provides proactive, strategic counsel to communications, marketing, advertising and creative agencies on legal and business issues they face continually in their work, including:

• agency-client relationships, including agency service contracts,
• agency-freelancer relationship management,
• trademark and brand protection matters,
• social media and content marketing legal compliance,
• copyright protection, licensing and transfer of creative content,
• advertising law

Sharon is a nationally recognized author and speaker to advertising and communications industry organizations, marketing agencies, and in-house marketing teams, and has created and presented numerous training sessions and conference presentations to industry professionals on timely industry legal issues.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• Sharon’s background
• Why Sharon majored in political science in college and why she chose to become a lawyer from there
• How Sharon got involved working with agencies and why she finds that work so rewarding
• A challenging plagiarism case that Sharon worked on with a client
• How to be proactive about protecting your work
• Why pursuing damages on stolen work usually is not worth it
• Trademarks, Copyright, and Trade Value: how they differ and how to protect them
• Why you need written contracts with freelancers that says you own the work they create for you
• Life for Sharon growing up in a divorced family that wasn’t poor but didn’t have a lot of money either
• Sharon’s instincts as a spender more than a saver and how she’s had to work on saving
• Why staying in a situation that doesn’t suit you is very dangerous
• Why going into business for herself was the best decision Sharon ever made
• Sharon’s AP English teacher that made a huge impact on her in high school
• Organizations that Sharon is involved in

Ways to contact Sharon:

• Email: sharon@legalandreative.com
• Twitter: @SharonToerek
• Website: www.legalandcreative.com
• Website: agencylegalprotection.com

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