The Firm.
We are business lawyers, serving the media, entertainment and technology industries.
Smiths was formed in April 2004 by a merger of the established businesses of media, communications and technology lawyers McNeive Solicitors and of the London based partners of entertainment lawyers Lewis Davis Shapiro & Lewit. The businesses were combined to reflect the relentless convergence of the industries in which their respective clients operate, and those clients' needs for advice which spans several sectors, yet is specialist.
Smiths is committed to providing legal services of the highest technical standards, free of gobbledigook, with a practical and commercial approach tailored to each client's needs and objectives.
Smiths' lawyers and their clients typically have long term working relationships, so the lawyers tend to be unusually familiar with their clients' businesses, and to have an informal, approachable style in dealing with them. Thus Smiths is able to provide a swift and efficient service, and to avoid running up unnecessary costs.
Smiths has particular expertise in the laws relating to electronic commerce, advertising, data protection, gaming, multimedia, information technology, telecommunications, recorded music, artist management, touring, merchandising, sponsorship, and publishing (music, software and literary). Smiths also advises on corporate structures and business models within those sectors.
Smiths has a network of relationships with other specialists, national and international, on which it calls to supplement its expertise when necessary.
Smiths' clients include the providers of interactive services (such as internet and mobile service providers), content (such as games and gaming businesses), commerce (such as auctioneers, advertisers, photographic libraries, fashion designers and online stores) and other services (reunions, for instance); digital agencies, and their clients; software houses, and providers of software-based application services; major and independent record companies; music publishers; composers, recording artists and other performers (such as TV and radio presenters); providers of services (such as press and promotion services); managers and agents; film production companies; and executives working in these industries.