Around Syracuse Law

The precision with which 38 Rockettes on stage individually perform 160 eye-high kicks in unison in every show is stunning. Audiences are mesmerized, never thinking about the lawyers behind the scenes who enable this extraordinary entertainment with their own precision and discipline.

“If you’re involved in the production of live or taped shows, you’re dealing with contracting, music rights, film rights, intellectual property, and union/labor issues,” says Stephanie Jacqueney, G’82, L’82, who spent more than two decades as Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs for Madison Square Garden. Jacqueney didn’t learn all that she needed to know in law school. But it didn’t matter.

“I didn’t take a copyright class, but I did learn how to read a statute and cases, and how to be analytical. That’s what matters,” says Jacqueney, who has been a member of the College of Law’s Board of Advisors since 2020. She entered law school with a strong interest in public policy, drawn to Syracuse because she could obtain both a J.D. and a Master’s from the Maxwell School. She had worked in human services and intended “to save the world and do something in the public interest.” But the compensation from those jobs generally can’t pay off law school debt. So, she headed to corporate law.

While at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, she worked on a case involving a prominent singer in a dispute against her manager. Jacqueney found her first venture in entertainment law “fascinating.” At Manhattan Cable TV, a Time Warner subsidiary where she was General Counsel, she struck the balance between general legal work and lobbying/public policy. Then came Madison Square Garden, with its TV productions, Radio City Christmas Spectacular, Super Bowl, and other stadium halftime shows. She handled agreements for Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Gloria Estefan, and other entertainers.

It wasn’t the glamour of it all that fascinated her. It was the complexity of legal issues and the need for creative and rapid solutions. She cites the example of one Super Bowl Halftime show threatened by a copyright infringement accusation. “In this case, the set design included hundreds of feather flags. Just days before the scheduled show, someone claimed to have a copyright on the flag design,” she recalls. There was no time to fight the claim in court. She recommended giving the designer an acknowledgment in the post-show credits. Problem solved. After all, the show must go on.

Similarly, it took an army of lawyers, flight engineers, safety, and insurance personnel to successfully pull off Diana Ross’ helicopter exit after her Super Bowl Halftime performance before 100,000 fans at Tempe Arizona Stadium. “We spent weeks working on making those few seconds happen,” says Jacqueney. The event has since been hailed as one of the greatest Super Bowl Halftime exits ever!

Though her work with Madison Square Garden was fulfilling, it was all-consuming. “I was moonlighting as the mother of triplets.” When her two sons and daughter were in high school planning their college moves, their mom made her own, setting up her own consulting firm. It gave her the flexibility she needed
to help her kids make their transitions.

Her triplets excelled in college (two at Syracuse University and the third at the University of Miami) and Jacqueney still laughs at the memory of coordinating with her husband, Mark Edelstein, for their presence at their triplets’ convocations and commencements, all scheduled for the same weekend. “It was all about logistics.” She made it happen. After all, the show must go on.

Jacqueney’s clients include ABC/Disney and skating rink operators in iconic locations such as Central Park. Her career trajectory stands as a model for young lawyers who might feel stuck. “If you’re analytical, diligent, and work hard, you can change gears. Take a CLE. Seize opportunities. The truth of the matter is that I fell into this specialty.”

When Joe Di Scipio L’95 was in law school, he wasn’t especially interested in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). He had his eyes set on politics, perhaps the U.S. Attorney’s office, and thrived on the trial team. Today, Di Scipio is heavily engaged in business negotiations and regulatory compliance in a field that involves a whole lot of politics.

As Senior Vice President for FCC Legal & Business Affairs for Fox Corporation, Di Scipio is involved in the buying and selling of television stations, brokering distribution deals on streaming and digital platforms, and negotiating licensing deals for the retransmission of Fox TV programming. “This isn’t the M&A we studied in law school. Selling broadcast is not like selling a building or real estate,” says Di Scipio.

Having worked at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) both before and after law school, Di Scipio knows how regulations impact a rapidly evolving field. “How we consume media is changing by the minute,” he says. “I actually had predicted the demise of the field I work in several times, and it just hasn’t happened. In 2005, I thought over-the-air broadcast television would go away, particularly the network affiliation distribution model. I figured cable and satellite would replace that model, but that was not to be. Now, people can download or stream anything they want.”

He says the skills he acquired in prepping for trials are most relevant today as he works through the morass of regulations governing media and negotiating with the FCC on policy changes. “At the federal level, a lot of times the decisions being made are more political than they are legal,” says Di Scipio. “You have to understand the politics involved to get to the desired legal decision.”

For example, when Fox stations started airing college football games, they wanted to offer extended pre-game programming. But the FCC required broadcast stations to carry a certain amount of children’s television, which typically aired at the same time. “Fortunately, we were working with a Republican administration that had a deregulatory bent, but getting them to change the rule and allow greater flexibility in how children’s programming was provided is still a huge deal.”

Di Scipio credits Professor Emeritus Travis Lewin and Judge Elijah “Chip” Huling who worked with the trial team for instilling in him the skills to succeed. “It is the ability to think strategically on your feet when you’re negotiating, to get the other party to move toward your ultimate goal,” he says.

In many broadcast distribution deals, the two sides are partners in desiring to disseminate programming, “but we are diametrically opposed because one side wants to get paid a lot of money and the other doesn’t want to pay anything,” says Di Scipio. “If you can’t figure out how to get the deal done, you’ll go dark. Nobody wants that.” He prides himself on having developed a reputation for being tough, but fair.

Di Scipio says he “trades on trust” in this fast-paced field. Trust that comes from years of building relationships, and involvement with the National Association of Broadcasters, Federal Communications Bar Association, FCBA Foundation, Syracuse University Alumni Association, and Syracuse University Law Alumni Association.

“My advice to students or new lawyers is to invest time in developing relationships outside of their work. It gives you legitimacy. It earns you trust.”

Shawna Benfield L’09 was drawn to the entertainment industry early on—but always worked behind the scenes. “I was way too shy and utterly lacking in talent,” she laughs, “But I loved seeing how things were created.” She was the first non-musical theater major to take a course in the history of musical theatre at the University of Miami, where she majored in sports administration. So it was probably inevitable that she would end up in entertainment law, but it was not a straight career path out of law school.

As a first-generation college student, a law degree represented stability and respect. “I fell into the same mold as many law school students,” she says, studying for a career in litigation or corporate law, soaking up essential skills and being inspired by certain professors. She wasn’t drawn to tax law, for example, but loved classes taught by Professors Robert Nassau and Gregory Germain, who became trusted mentors.

Following graduation, Benfield clerked for federal judges and worked in a big law firm doing commercial and securities litigation, but she never lost her passion for the entertainment business. Her husband Andrew K. Benfield L’09, a tax attorney, encouraged her to career course-correct. She reached out to a network of colleagues and alumni. “I did the awkward thing, talked to strangers, and asked for help,” says Benfield. She demonstrated that her skills were transferrable to an industry that is essentially “a mishmash of potential legal issues.”

Bringing her legal acumen into the creative process, Benfield, who is now associate principal counsel for Walt Disney Television and the FX network, gets involved in everything from contract negotiations with agents to issues related to freedom of expression here and abroad, to labor law and international contracts. The consumers of entertainment are unaware of the legal complexities behind the scenes. Benfield offers this example from when she was a production attorney for The Voice. During a live broadcast, a contestant went missing, forcing producers and directors to quickly decide (during a commercial break) how to cover the time. Benfield advised on measures that were equitable to other contestants and in compliance with rules governing competition shows. “The worst thing a lawyer can do is ruin the vibe of the show,” says Benfield.

“We never want to hamstring the creative,” says Benfield. She works closely with production teams to facilitate storytelling that entertains, enlightens, and impacts viewers around the world. Sometimes it’s about solving logistical problems: “Can we go to Iceland to shoot that scene? Do we need visas if we only work there for a week?”

Sometimes, it’s about managing legal risks to empower the storyteller. For example, in working with a journalist on the production of a docudrama, Benfield considers “wildly different rules” governing free speech and defamation in different countries. “I’ll tell the writer, ‘Put your pen to paper, be your best, and we will figure out the rest.’ Sometimes the very best stories carry risk. But just because it’s risky doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be doing it.”

Having taken some risks herself in redirecting her own career, Benfield couldn’t be happier: “There’s nothing better than helping people with creative talent succeed, and being able to play a small role in that is just wonderful.”