Laurie Kaye acted for Harry Potter author during site creation
Who? Laurie Kaye, 62, digital media, e-commerce and intellectual property solicitor at Hertfordshire firm Laurence Kaye.
Why is he in the news? Acted for Harry Potter author JK Rowling during the creation of Pottermore.com, an online community and electronic bookstore. Kaye’s role included handling contract negotiations with suppliers and devising practical legal solutions to reconcile national e-commerce and intellectual property laws with the worldwide web. The Harry Potter series has sold more than 450 million copies and been translated into 67 languages.
Thoughts on the case: ‘Pottermore.com was the most exciting project of my career. It was groundbreaking and used all the experience that I had gained over the years in other sectors. It points the way to the new technical and creative skills that publishers need to survive in the 21st century, and illustrates that building collaborative relationships with key partners is at the heart of the new publishing model.’
Why become a lawyer? ‘I finally recognised the wisdom of my father’s suggestion that the law, with its emphasis on analysis and debate, was the career for me.’
Career high: ‘Working on Pottermore.com.’
Career low: ‘Seeing the firm at which I was working, Andersen Legal, dwindle in the space of a few months from more than 2,800 lawyers to nothing. This was in the aftermath of the 2001 Enron scandal, when an $11bn auditing failure was uncovered. The silver lining was that it led me to found my own firm.’
