Why choose our litigation lawyers?
Fieldfisher LLP is one of the UK’s largest firms, with respected Dispute Resolution and Intellectual Property departments, and its own in-house litigation funding offering. The claim will be led by Stephen Critchley, a partner in our dispute resolution department who, unusually, has experience of both music royalty claims and large group litigation.
The claim will be financed on a “no win, no fee” basis, so the only payment we receive will be out of the damages if you win.
To register your interest, please complete the form below.
Apart from mandatory fields marked (*), you can complete as much or as little of the form below as you like, and you do not need to submit any documents. The more information you give us, the better we can analyse your claim, but you can just give us your contact details if you would prefer to talk before sending us anything.
If you wish to sign an NDA before disclosing sensitive information, please download your copy.
General FAQs
Artists on UK recording contracts that do not specify a streaming royalty rate.
It is difficult to say. Our aim is to achieve a settlement agreement for you as soon as possible. If settlement is not possible, litigation could be 12 months or longer.
If we win or settle the case and you are awarded damages, you will pay us an agreed amount to cover the work we have done for you and the costs we have paid on your behalf along the way. Before you enter the “no win, no fee” agreement to this effect, we will explain how it works and how our fees will be calculated.
If you lose your case, you simply walk away and do not pay us anything. The court might order you to pay the record labels’ costs, but we will put in place an insurance policy that will cover those. See “What is ATE?” below.
No.
The claim will be run out of our Dispute Resolution department. Stephen Critchley will work with a team selected from over 100 dispute resolution lawyers in our UK offices, assisted as necessary by our Intellectual Property department of over 30 UK-based lawyers.
We may pursue either a class action (if claims are sufficiently similar) or a group action.
You will be completely anonymous in a class action.
Even in a group action, there will be at least hundreds of artists to spread costs thinly. The more who join, the thinner the spread. In any case, the number will be such as to avoid focus on any specific claimant. The claimants will be the parties to the recording contract, which are usually the individual band members, not the (generally better known) band names.
There is no risk that you will be included in a group action merely by submitting information above. The group will only include those who sign up to it.
“ATE” stands for After The Event insurance. This insurance covers your so-called “adverse costs” risk, i.e. the risk that the court might order you to pay the defendants’ legal costs if you lose. If that happens, the ATE insurer will pay those costs. We can fund the premium. Alternatively, some policies’ premiums are deferred and only paid out of the damages in the event of a win.
Key Contacts
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London, England
- Email Stephen
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London, England
- +44 (0)330 460 6533
- Email James
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