by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Carolyn Herman vividly recalls the moment she decided to move to Florida. The memory is still as vivid as a full moon dancing on dark water.
She had been living on the New Jersey coast and working in New York City as an administrative law judge when she agreed to help a friend move to Melbourne.
Since graduating from Fordham University Law School in 1977, Herman had spent most of her working life in teeming urban areas. A two-year stint in Washington, D.C., was sandwiched between 15 years with firms and agencies in New York.
In September 1992, she and the friend who was moving were driving straight through from New Jersey. It was the dead of night when they arrived in North Florida.
“I can still picture it,” she said. “It must have been about 2 o’clock in the morning when we went over the Intracoastal, and I said, ‘this is great.’ I really fell in love with it.”
By the end of the year, she had returned to find a place to live, signed up for The Florida Bar exam, changed her driver’s license and registered to vote.
“I never looked back,” she said.
The Long Island native received a bachelor’s degree in community service education at Cornell University and her law degree from Fordham University Law School.
Her first job after graduation was in insurance litigation, preparing pleadings and legal memoranda for an insurance defense firm.
Beginning in 1978, she was assistant corporation counsel in Mayor Ed Koch’s newly formed Commercial Litigation Division, working all areas of civil litigation, including trials, appeals, discovery, motion practice and settlement.
“They were looking for some young, new attorneys, and I was accepted,” said Herman. “I was trained by appellate lawyers, trained to look at the big picture.
It was a wonderful experience.”
She worked for a Senate subcommittee while earning a master’s degree in administrative law at George Washington University National Law Center; worked for a Washington, D.C., firm representing taxpayers in rate hearings before the Public Service Commission; was a regulatory attorney for AT&T and was editor of Brownstone Publishing in New York City.
“I’d done a lot of things, but I’d never had my own practice,” said Herman. “People said I was pretty independent and ought to have my own practice.”
And that’s what she began when she moved to Jacksonville Beach.
“Just before I left New York, I was representing some people in the modeling industry,” she said. “I thought, this is kind of fun.
“Not many were doing entertainment law here, so I knew this was going to be a good niche. I said I’d better find something unique. And I did. I made something out of absolutely nothing . . . with a lot of hard work.”
Her clients come from all areas of the entertainment industry — music, film, television and literary publishing.
“I have really devoted my efforts to working with the up-and-comers here,” said Herman. “I do a lot of preventive lawyering. A lot of Music 101.”
One of her most basic tasks, she said, is to get creative people to not neglect the left side of the brain.
“If they have a contract, they want to know where it says they have creative control,” said Herman. “That’s really all they care about. Unfortunately, a lot of the time nobody really has any proof of what the heck happened. They were just in somebody’s garage or room and decided, ‘This sounds good.’
“I have to start from scratch, explain that it is wonderful you have this creative energy, but this is a business; you have to treat it as a business.”
Shortly after opening her practice, Herman joined several groups associated with her new specialty.
She became involved with the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section of The Florida Bar and was the chair in 2002.
She was president of the Florida Motion Picture Television Association’s local chapter and is on the board of the Florida chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
She conducts seminars, speaks at the First Coast Writers’ Festival and teaches entertainment law — among other subjects — at Florida Coastal School of Law.
Although Herman’s primary focus is entertainment law, she also does some intellectual property, copyright and trademark law. She also represents some condominium developers and some condo associations.
She is married to Ben Rubin and has two stepchildren, Joshua and Jennifer, and a 4-year-old son, Jacob, “who’s at a great age, a real sponge.”
The entertainment industry in Jacksonville is improving, she said. But it sorely needs an essential layer to move beyond its borders.
“We have a lot of talent, but we don’t have the middle management — the managers, the publicity-type people. There are some, but it’s still not part of the everyday life here.
“And that’s a problem for the talent. That’s why they end up leaving. Most of them want to stay here, but they leave because they can’t get that team.
“And so much of being an entertainer is having that team.”