Raena Lea-Shannon BA LLB

Partner

Raena Lea-Shannon LLB BA, working in film, tv, music, art and technology, experienced in IP, Trade Practices and Defamation litigation, Partner at Frankel Lawyers in Sydney, is a leading Australian Media, Entertainment and Information Technology Lawyer with over twenty years experience. Raena has a thorough knowledge of the legal issues in digital media and information technologies. Her client base ranges from artists and musicians, film makers and photographers to record labels, book publishers as well as web and games developers, digital effects companies, mobile app developers and web startups.

Raena has written numerous articles and presented papers on Entertainment and Media Law, including articles on current media law topics published on New Matilda. She currently guest lectures at the Australian Film Television and Radio School on legal aspects and issues of feature film and documentary film devleopment, financing and production as well as at the Australian Institute of Music on copyright and the Music Business and previoulsy lectured part-time at the University of New South Wales on the Entertainment Law, Masters. She is a committed and active advocate for freedom of expression. She has been a Committee Member and public officer of Watch On Censorship for over a decade. Raena has represented the Distributors of the films Irreversible (Accent Film Entertainment), Nine Songs (Accent Film Entertainment), Anatomy of Hell (Potential Films) and Mysterious Skin (Hopscotch) as well as a number of mass market computer games to the Office of Film and Literature Classification Review Board.

She is a member of the New South Wales Society for Computers and the Law, advises the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association and was elected as a Committee Member of the New South Wales Chapter of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association in November 2008.

In 1999 she was awarded the Law Society of NSW, Community Legal Centre award for pro bono solicitor for working voluntarily with the Arts Law Centre over a period of more than fifteen years.