Paul Schaefer
Head, Legal & Compliance (TV)
ABOUT
Paul joined Abbas Media Law in 2017 and is the head of the firm’s TV Legal & Compliance team. Paul has extensive experience as a media content lawyer and advises on a broad range of television content across all genres, including factual, fact-ent, documentaries, current affairs, reality, drama and entertainment.
In addition to general editorial legal advice (including defamation, privacy and contempt and all Ofcom rules) Paul has particular experience in copyright and fair dealing and advising on complex data protection law issues in a television context. Paul is Deputy Editor of the firm’s magazine, zoom-in, which is published as a supplement to Broadcast.
EXPERIENCE
Prior to joining ABBAS, Paul worked for a number of years as a lawyer in the Programme Legal Advice Department of the BBC where he advised on news and current affairs, consumer, factual, drama and entertainment programmes. In particular, Paul has worked on a wide variety of programmes filmed with the police, housing officers and Trading Standards officers.
Paul has also advised extensively on secret filming, pre and post transmission legal threats and on programmes about young and vulnerable contributors - including contributors involved in care and adoption proceedings – as well as a range of high profile reality TV programmes.
Originally from Australia, Paul worked as an in-house lawyer in Melbourne between 2010 and 2013 at The Herald and Weekly Times Pty Ltd, the publisher of the Herald Sun (Australia’s highest circulation daily newspaper) and part of News Corp
Australia. While at the Herald Sun, Paul advised on a broad range of editorial legal matters and regularly provided pre-publication legal advice.
WHEN NOT WORKING
Paul enjoys learning Greek and spending time at the beach (which he tries to combine wherever possible). After spending time in Germany and China when he was younger, Paul speaks German and Mandarin Chinese at a conversational level.