Qualifications
- Linda holds a BCL degree (1973) and an LLM in Commercial Law (1995) from UCD. In 2009 she took the Law Society Diploma in Corporate Law and Governance.
- Professional memberships include the Law Society of Ireland, Dublin Solicitors’ Bar Assciation and the Licensing Executives’ Society.
Practice – Intellectual Property
- With a background in commercial law, Linda is a specialist in intellectual property, and advises the whole spectrum of clients – corporate, institutional and individual, on questions involving intellectual property protection, and especially copyright law.
- Linda was closely involved in the legislative process leading to the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000, making submissions to government on behalf of various clients, and attending Dail Committee hearings. She continues to make submissions for clients who identify problems with the Act and is keenly interested in the need for reform of certain aspects of the legislation.
- Linda was a co-founder and remains a director of the Copyright Association of Ireland, established in 1996 to disseminate information about copyright, and which will host a major international copyright conference in 2011. She also co-founded the Irish Visual Artists Rights Organisation, Ireland’s copyright collecting society for visual artists.
- With the huge growth in the use of new media, Linda’s work is increasingly focused in this area, and reflects the convergence between intellectual property, information technology, data protection and other areas of law affecting media.
Practice – non-profit governance
- Linda was chairperson of a publicly-funded arts body in the 1990s, during a period of radical change in the organisation. This gave her an interest in the working of voluntary boards and the management of change in non-profit organisations.
- She was commissioned by the Arts Council to write A Practical Guide for Board Members of Arts Organisations, published in 2006. This identified her as a lawyer interested in governance, and she was asked to advise many arts bodies on issues of structure, performance and regulatory compliance. Her practice in this area has widened to include all types of non-profit entity, whatever their structure or field of activity. In 2009, Linda took the Law Society Diploma on Corporate Law & Governance to inform this work.
Teaching and writing
- Linda is an occasional lecturer at UCD, where she teaches a range of topics to Master’s students in Cultural Policy & Arts Management. She also makes frequent seminar presentations and participates in workshops.
- She writes when time allows. In October 2010 she contributed an article to the new Irish Intellectual Property Law Quarterly, and in November provided a paper on the need for copyright reform at a conference organised by First Law. These pieces can be accessed from the Home page on this site. She is currently writing the Irish chapter of a European publication on the implementation of the Information Society Directive of 2001.
EU consultancy
- Linda is an approved expert in intellectual property law for the purposes of various EU-funded projects, and has participated in a number of missions to advise governmental agencies in EU accession countries and states bordering those countries. The purpose of the mission is normally to advise on approximation of laws to EU standard, and/or to devise a strategy for IPR enforcement. In this capacity she has co-authored several publications on EU Intellectual Property Law and Policy.