Canadian Lawyer

62 www.canadianlawyermag.com PEOPLE FIRM INSIGHT Advocating for brands in a new world Launched two years ago, after she spent a decade practising IP law at several differ- ent firms, Ashlee Froese's Froese Law has built a niche, serving creators, artists, entre- preneurs and others in the brand-to-con- sumer sector. Froese operates her business on the belief that rather than showing clients value by looking down on them, mounted on a ped- estal made of exclusive competency, cre- dentials and expert knowledge, more can be gained in positioning oneself on their level, as a partner. "What we're trying to do is really tear down the ivory tower concept of law to make it more accessible and really position our- selves to work with creatives so that we're an ally for their success," she says. Froese Law is a cross-border branding, corporate and commercial firm that helps clients structure their business and protect, enforce and commercialize their brands. "It's really an industry-focused firm. We deal with dope branded, cool B2C clients," she says. It's been 13 years since Froese graduated from Osgoode Hall Law school and, in that short time, much of how media and mar- keting operate has been revolutionized. In 2009, Froese joined a full-service business law firm in Mississauga, Ont., after her first few professional years were spent at a Toronto IP boutique. Although Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok had not yet been Ashlee Froese is a lawyer and trademark agent who has been practising branding and fashion law for more than a decade born, and LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook were still new, Froese had already noticed the legal industry was slow in capitalizing on what appeared to her to be a valuable business development tool. She decided she would do so. From there, she explored the business and legal issues associated with the fash- ion industry and found that, although there was a fashion-law movement in the U.S. and Europe, that specialization hadn't yet arrived in Canada. She launched a blog on the legal, political and business issues affect- ing the fashion industry. She then went back to Bay Street and kept building her practice, with clients including celebrities, influenc- ers, DJs, models and others in need of B2C- focused services. With the rise of social media came the rise of social-media-influencer marketing and an emerging specialty for lawyers like Froese. An "influencer" is someone who can affect the purchase decisions of a specific social milieu through their perceived authority and knowledge in that area and the relation- ship they've cultivated with a wide audience. Often, an influencer will have a vast social media following and use this broad reach to market products for businesses, such as makeup artists who review cosmetics prod- ucts on Instagram or fashion bloggers who write blogs about a fashion line or clothing company for a price. Influencer marketing on Instagram has grown to a $1.7-billion industry in 2019 from an $800,000 industry in 2017, and it is pro- jected to continue to grow to $2.3 billion in 2020, according to an August 2019 study by Statista. A report from Influencer Marketing Hub puts the size of the influencer market- ing industry as a whole at $6.5 billion for 2019, up from $1.7 billion in 2016. Froese is taking advantage of this rapidly growing phenomenon. While the methods may be new, she says, the legal issues are not. Like any celebrity or model, influencers are monetizing a personal brand and need lawyers to ensure they incorporate and nego- tiate their contracts properly and that they are protecting their namesake brand, she says. Along with marketing law, there are morality clauses – provisions within con- WORKING WITH CREATIVES Froese works with creative types and says she believes there's a left-brain, right-brain divide between lawyers and the artists and entrepreneurs she represents. She wants to "bridge that gap," finding that, although law is applicable to everything, the "ivory tower construct" associated with the law is an unnecessary barrier for creative types who would benefit by working with lawyers. 62 www.canadianlawyermag.com

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