Matt Clark

Matt is a bright and experienced attorney who approaches advertising and entertainment legal challenges with enthusiasm and creativity.

Matt focuses his practice on advertising, entertainment, and general intellectual property matters, with a focus on representing agencies, advertisers, artists, authors, publishing companies, production companies, and record labels.  Representative matters include master service agreements, vendor contracts, ad purchase and media buy agreements, NDAs, talent and spokesperson agreements, licensing agreements, recording contracts, publishing agreements, legal review of all stages (from concept to pitch to execution) of agency creative, FTC disclosures and compliance, contests and sweeps promotions, as well as USPTO trademark clearances.  Matt particularly enjoys working with new and emerging creative talent.

Matt has deep experience as in-house counsel in two different publicly-traded advertising agency holding companies.  Before CM Law, Matt was the head of the legal team for Omnicom’s marketing agencies Tracy-Locke and Haygarth, where he proudly won the “Most Likely to Save Your Ass” award while managing all agency legal work for clients including S.C. Johnson, PepsiCo, Pizza Hut, Diageo, Kellogg’s, and Athletic Brewing Company. Matt was previously counsel on the legal and business affairs team that serviced Interpublic’s marketing & PR agencies Golin, Weber Shandwick, Octagon, and Current, for clients including Anheuser-Busch InBev, Milk/Chocolate Milk, Mars, Gatorade, Unilever, USPS, and Aldi.

In private practice, Matt provided general legal services including contract management, business affairs, and risk management on a broad range of advertising, entertainment, publishing, intellectual property, and related general matters for many well-loved independent musicians, authors, artists, record labels, websites, podcasts, and publishing companies.

Matt was also an adjunct professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he co-taught a class on legal and business issues faced by emerging artists, and worked as an associate on the Fed Tax and Exempt Orgs teams at KPMG.

Matt is an accomplished musician, and thereby brings a unique appreciation for his creative clients.  He’s written and recorded over a dozen albums of original music, both solo and with various artists, including two for Capitol Records and Astralwerks.  Matt has been a frequent musical contributor to the popular radio show This American Life, and has performed in multiple live stage productions of the show.  Other highlight performances include Lollapalooza, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, Oprah, The Cartier Foundation, and The Lincoln Center.

Matt received a B.A. in studio art with a minor in music from The University of Iowa, while taking core classes in Iowa’s honors program. Matt received a J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a Scholar in Law scholarship award recipient for outstanding academic achievement. Matt also received an L.L.M. in taxation from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.