Players On the Move

The global streaming company Spotify has named longtime in-house lawyer Kevan Choset as its general counsel, formalizing the role he’s held on an interim basis since Eve Konstan gave up the role in January. The move marks the culmination of a 12-year journey for Choset. He joined Spotify in 2013 as legal counsel focused on intellectual property and litigation, and steadily rose through the legal ranks. Most recently, he served as associate general counsel and head of legal strategy. Choset steps into the top legal role at a pivotal time for Spotify, which last year reported its first-ever annual profit after implementing several shifts in strategy — including raising subscription prices and pulling back on royalty payments for music with fewer than 1,000 streams. The Stockholm-based platform, which now counts 640 million monthly users globally (including 252 million paying subscribers), generated more than $16 billion in revenue in 2024. As general counsel, Choset will oversee all global legal matters — including litigation, regulatory strategy, content licensing and compliance — for Spotify, which operates in more than 180 markets and navigates the complex, often politically charged, world of music rights. Before joining Spotify, Choset worked at MTV Networks in New York as senior counsel for business and legal affairs, focusing on intellectual property and litigation. Choset takes the reins from Konstan, who’d been general counsel for four years. Konstan joined Spotify in 2020, just as the company was accelerating its push into podcasts and expanding its global footprint. She brought deep media experience to the role, including having spent two decades at HBO, where she was general counsel from 2015 to 2020. After that, she served briefly as general counsel of WarnerMedia Entertainment. … After a seven-year stint at casino equipment giant Light & Wonder that’s included a recent spate of intellectual-property lawsuits from competitors, Chief Legal Officer James Sottile is cashing in his chips for retirement. Sottile, 64, plans to leave Dec. 31. He will be succeeded by Susan Dawson, a 13-year veteran of the company who’s currently senior vice president and deputy general counsel. But Sottile will serve as a consultant to the company during 2026 for $11,959 a month, or $143,508, which is 20% of his base salary of $708,750, according to a  regulatory filing. Sottile’s total compensation last year was $2.5 million, the company’s proxy statement shows. The company was known as Scientific Games before a 2022 rebranding. Dawson joined the company as legal director for Europe and assistant general counsel in 2012. She’s been deputy general counsel since 2018. Her experience in gaming spans two decades. After starting her legal career at Eversheds, Dawson in 2006 joined Inspired Gaming Group. After spending three years there, she joined the server-based gaming company Gala Coral Group, where she spent two years. Dawson is stationed in London but will relocate to Light & Wonder's headquarters in Las Vegas. Light & Wonder makes electronic gaming machines, online games and table games that are sold on the Bally, WMS and Shuffle Master brands. Sottile had joined the company from Jones Day, where he was a law partner. Light & Wonder’s revenues soared 10% last year to $3.2 billion. In February, Sottile’s team assisted with the $850 million purchase of Grover Gaming’s charitable gaming business. But Light & Wonder’s legal team and outside counsel have also been busy with a slew of lawsuits brought by competitors of late. In 2024, Las Vegas-based rival Aristocrat Technologies filed suit in a Nevada federal court accusing Light & Wonder of trade secret misappropriation and copyright infringement. Aristocrat claimed Light & Wonder created slot machines that were similar in name and features to Aristocrat's popular Dragon Link slots. Last September, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction forcing Light & Wonder to remove from casinos some of its machines in question. Earlier this year, Aristocrat filed a second amended complaint alleging trade secret misappropriation involving another gaming machine. Light & Wonder denied many of the allegations but agreed to stop commercializing certain machines. The company said it fired a game designer who formerly worked at Aristocrat after an internal review found she had breached the terms of her employment agreement. Meanwhile, Light & Wonder is fighting a patent infringement suit filed by Evolution Gaming in Nevada federal court involving that company’s Lightning Roulette game. Evolution Malta Limited v. Sia Evolution Latvia, 2:24-cv-00993. A federal judge in Nevada last year dismissed an earlier suit Evolution brought against Light & Wonder after concluding its allegations were too vague. … Moore & Van Allen has added entertainment finance attorney Terrence "Terry" Dugan from O’Melveny & Myers as a firm member in Charlotte, NC, to help lead a newly launched entertainment finance group. Dugan and Brett E. Moskowitz will lead the new group, which is part of the North Carolina-founded firm’s financial services practice. The firm added entertainment finance law to its offerings when Moskowitz joined in 2024. Entertainment finance focuses on clients across the entertainment industry, such as agent banks, arrangers, lenders, private credit providers and borrowers on music and motion picture financing transactions. Dugan provides counsel to lender banks and private equity funds on finance, acquisitions and workouts in the film, television, and music sectors. He has been named to Billboard’s list of Top Music Lawyers annually since 2023. … Reed Smith will be able to “expand our music capabilities” in Atlanta with the addition of former Interscope Records counsel Nneka Witter, a firm leader said. Witter recently joined the firm as a counsel in its entertainment and media industry group and will be based in New York before transitioning to the firm’s new Atlanta office upon completing her admission to the Georgia bar, Reed Smith announced. Witter served as vice president of business and legal affairs with Interscope after serving in in-house roles with Twitter and YouTube. She also was an associate with Reed Smith from 2017 to 2019. Julie Hardin, Reed Smith’s managing partner for the Americas said, “We will continue to look to Atlanta to add talent to our leading entertainment and media practice.” At Interscope, Witter focused on intellectual-property protection and content exploitation, in addition to advising on legal and commercial matters tied to music, film and artist-branded media, according to information from Reed Smith. She also counseled on content licensing, digital distribution and media partnerships at Twitter and YouTube. … Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough has recently added corporate attorney Peter Rho as a partner in Los Angeles from Smith Gambrell & Russell. Rho’s varied practice focuses on Korea-related business as well as complex business transactions, cross-border deals and disputes across multiple industries that include the entertainment business. … Douglas Emhoff, the former U.S. Second Gentleman as husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, has returned to his alma mater, the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, as a distinguished visiting professor of law. Emhoff, who received his J.D. from USC Gould in 1990, is a partner in the global law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher and will teach entertainment disputes at USC. He previously taught entertainment law and alternative dispute resolution as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.