About Robert Williams Law

Mr. Williams has significant complex transactional experience and project management know-how, gained from his work at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP and Dechert LLP. Having managed large capital markets, leveraged finance and cross border M&A transactions, in 2011 Mr. Williams began using his finance experience in the area of single-picture financing structures. He now focuses on advising clients at each step of the motion picture and television process, including development, co-production, production, finance and licensing. He also advises with respect to music agreements, writer and director agreements, the guilds (WGA, DGA and SAG-AFTRA) and on corporate law.

• “Financing: Working with the Streamers,” a 90 minute lecture delivered to the Erich Pommer Institute (January 2024).
• “Anglo-Saxon vs. Continental European Law,” a 90 minute lecture delivered at the Film University Babelsberg (November 2023).
• “Contracting for Producers,” a 90 minute lecture at the Danish Film School in Copenhagen (October 2023).
• Scoring for Hollywood: What You Need to Know, a 90 minute presentation at Soundtrack Cologne (2019).
• Motion Picture Finance in The Essential Guide to Entertainment Law: Deal Making (2018).
• Getting What You Bargained For: How Courts Might Provide A Coherent Basis for Damages that Arise When Remedies Fail of their Essential Purpose. 5 Virginia Law & Business Review 131 (2010).
• Pyrrhic Policy: The IRS Has Elected to Fight a Battle that it Will Likely Win but that May Foster Tax Avoidance. 23 Virginia Tax Review 725 (2004).

Mr. Williams has lectured multiple times at Bucerius Law School, Hamburg. At the University of Virginia School of Law he served as Articles Review Editor for both the Virginia Tax Review and the Virginia Journal of International Law.

• B.A. 2001, University of Virginia, magna cum laude, History.
• J.D. 2005, University of Virginia School of Law. Articles Review Editor of the Virginia Journal of International Law and the Virginia Tax Review.

Mr. Williams has logged hundreds of hours of pro bono time, including successfully arguing the case of an asylum applicant as first chair in Federal Immigration Court. He also served for over a year as a member of the board of directors of REC Music Foundation, a non-profit that seeks to elevate lesser known operatic or classical works.

• California
• Washington D.C.
• Virginia (inactive)