If success in the entertainment law business were measured in reality-TV terms, Stephen Stohn would be its Canadian Idol.
In fact, you could literally call him the Canadian Idol lawyer: Mr. Stohn, founder of Toronto law firm Stohn Hay Cafazzo Dembroski Richmond LLP, acted as counsel for all of the competitors on last year's hit talent show series.
His selection for the job isn't surprising considering his long career in the music business trenches, first as a songwriter, then as a lawyer for such notable Canadian musicians as k.d. lang, Alannah Myles, Tom Cochrane, Loreena McKennitt and the Cowboy Junkies.
Now Mr. Stohn -- part of a growing group of lawyers who've carved out dual careers as legal advisers and creative producers in the music, film and TV industries -- is about to turn the tables on the reality-TV concept as co-producer of a highly anticipated new prime-time series dramatizing the travails of national talent show winners.
Instant Star, which begins airing Jan. 23 on CTV, is the brainchild of Mr. Stohn and his wife, Linda Schuyler. Together they run Epitome Pictures Inc., best-known for the 1990s soap opera Riverdale and the award-winning franchise of teen dramas, Degrassi Junior High, Degrassi High and Degrassi: The Next Generation.
The half-hour Instant Star episodes chronicle the ups and downs of Jude Harrison, a 15-year-old who wins a singer-songwriter contest and gets sucked into the vortex of concert tours, round-the-clock partying and the dog-eat-dog underworld of compromising music producers, sleazy managers and brazen paparazzi.
"It is just an absolute dream come true for me," says Mr. Stohn, a guitar player and keyboardist who, prior to becoming a lawyer in the 1970s, co-wrote the top-10 hits Maybe Your Heart and Once in a Long Time. His law firm bills itself as the country's largest focusing exclusively on entertainment and media law.
Mr. Stohn's legal colleagues give him credit for combining a distinguished law practice with strong business and creative skills.
"Stephen is one of those guys who I think is universally respected," says David Zitzerman, a top-ranked entertainment lawyer at Goodmans LLP.
In fact, Mr. Stohn belongs to a select but growing group of entertainment lawyers who've successfully crossed into the production world -- mirroring the broader legal world in which lawyers are increasingly being sought after for their business acumen, not just strict legal advice.
They include Martin Katz, founder of Toronto-based Prospero Pictures and executive producer of the acclaimed new film Hotel Rwanda, and Ivan Schneeberg and David Fortier, former Goodmans lawyers now working as co-presidents at Temple Street Entertainment, a Toronto-based TV and film production and distribution company responsible for TV's Queer as Folk and the new Darcy's Wild Life on NBC.
"When we came into law in 1993, Stephen Stohn was one of the handful of marquee entertainment lawyers who also had big-firm training," Mr. Schneeberg says. "He's an easy guy to deal with. I've got a lot of time for him."
Aside from production, many entertainment lawyers have also moved into more conventional business roles within the entertainment industry, including Graham Henderson, who worked with Mr. Stohn at law firms in the 1980s and later moved to Universal Music as its Canadian senior vice-president of e-commerce and business affairs before becoming president, last November, of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.
"I thought it would be inevitable [that Mr. Stohn]would start producing creative products rather than lawyering up contracts," Mr. Henderson says. "He's got left and right brain working overtime."
In addition to securing financing and hammering out all the necessary business contracts for Instant Star, Mr. Stohn supervised much of the hiring and music production for the series, which includes 13 original songs to be released on compact disc by the Orange Record Label. The songs will also be available for downloading off the Puretracks on-line music service.
It's a vindication of a career vision he embraced before detouring into law in the 1970s.
After playing in several high school rock bands in the 1960s, Mr. Stohn eventually teamed up with fellow Trent University student Christopher Ward. If the name sounds familiar, it's because Mr. Ward would go on to become one of Canada's first video jockeys and produce and pen a number of top hits for Ms. Myles, including the classic late-eighties anthem Black Velvet.
The starry-eyed pair ventured to Europe as a country and western duo, managing to pick up gigs here and there, including the Playboy Club in Turkey and aboard a U.S. destroyer.
Mr. Stohn later dabbled in movie production with two other friends but soon watched plans for what he calls the "great Canadian feature film" crash and burn after winning initial interest from a movie studio and director.
The team's lawyer, George Miller, nevertheless was impressed by Mr. Stohn's negotiating skills and urged his client to go to law school.
"I said, 'You've got to be crazy. Why would I want to go back to school? I'm doing what I want to do,' " Mr. Stohn recalls.
"He just kept bugging me and bugging me and finally I applied just to get him off my back."
While attending University of Toronto's law school, Mr. Stohn again ran into Mr. Ward, who had been negotiating a record deal with Warner Brothers.
"Chris said, 'Here's the song that they want to release as a single.' And he pulled out his guitar and he played it. And I said, 'God, that is a beautiful song. I'm not surprised they want to sign you. That's incredible. Well done.' "And he looked at me as though I was insane. And he said, 'Don't you remember? You wrote that song back when we were travelling in Europe.' And he had changed the lyrics."
That song was Maybe Your Heart, which continues to see rotation on golden-oldie stations.
"I still get royalties from that and Once in a Long Time," says Mr. Stohn, sitting in a boardroom strewn with awards, including two Emmys and a slew of Geminis like the one he received for his role as executive producer of the 2004 Juno Awards telecast. "They just play it in gold rotation. So if you ever listen to gold and think, 'Oh, my God, if I ever hear that song one more time I think I'm going to throw the radio out,' it's that sort of a thing."
Also while at law school, Mr. Stohn teamed with Mr. Miller to produce two low-budget movies, Me and The Clown Murders, the latter starring a young John Candy.
"Here I was going to law school in the summertime, shooting these feature films and having some songs on the radio, and it's like, how could life be any better than this?"
After articling with Mr. Miller, the two helped set up an entertainment law firm called Miller Stohn Mills. But Mr. Stohn was soon recruited by Gowling Henderson (now Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP) and, in 1985, left for a 10-year stint as partner with the country's largest firm, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, working closely with a junior lawyer who would become a close friend, the recording industry association's Mr. Henderson.
"Between us, there were a few years there when every single one of the artists nominated for group of the year or artist of the year were our clients," Mr. Stohn says. "We were doing very well."
While at McCarthys, Mr. Stohn married Ms. Schuyler, a former schoolteacher who had created the precursor series to the Degrassi dynasty called The Kids of Degrassi Street for the CBC. Together they built up Epitome, which in 1997 constructed a permanent set -- complete with a fake high school -- on four acres in Toronto's Don Mills neighbourhood.
At the same time, Mr. Stohn left McCarthy's to start his own firm, Stohn Henderson, with ex-McCarthys colleague Graham Henderson. Mr. Henderson eventually left. Other partners were brought in to form the current Stohn Hay partnership.
Today, Mr. Stohn divides his weeks between the firm and his production duties at Epitome, though he concedes the latter dominates his time.
He says Ms. Schuyler came up with the idea for Instant Star while accompanying him to tapings of Canadian Idol.
"She said, 'Do these kids know what they'll go through if they win?' " he says, referring to the pitfalls of instant stardom.
Mr. Stohn certainly knew. In fact, when it came to the Canadian Idol contract, he was hired in a manner befitting the popularity-contest genre.
As the show's producers prepared to sign up the 30 finalists, they decided it would be best to deal with a single lawyer representing the entire group. The alternative -- negotiating 30 distinct contracts with 30 lawyers -- had all the absurdity of a light bulb joke and was deemed unworkable.
So they came up with an unusual idea: scour the country for three distinguished entertainment lawyers, make them face their prospective clients to tout their experience and let the contestants vote for a favourite.
In the end, Mr. Stohn prevailed, but not before some serious nail biting.
"I just carried on and thanked them very much and went out, waiting for the phone call to say, 'Sorry,' " recalls the boyish-looking 56-year-old. "And I thought, 'Oh, thank God,' because I'm going to be really busy this summer anyway and couldn't have taken it on."
And, he says, the young contestants felt like big winners, too.
"The kids thought this was wonderful, that the lawyers were having to go through what they were going through, being voted off the island, so to speak."