Most rising second-year law students spend the summer in a familiar setting: a firm, a courthouse, a stack of briefs. Emma Avila spent hers inside the legal department of one of the biggest names in music, sitting in on live mediations, helping review the contract behind a headline-making AI acquisition, and watching artist-rights legislation move through the U.S. Senate in real time.
Avila, a Capital University Law School student with an undergraduate degree in International Business from The Ohio State University, landed a Legal and Business Affairs internship with Warner Music Group (WMG) in New York City, and turned it into one of the most eventful summers of her law school career so far.
Getting In the Room
Avila didn't want a typical corporate law internship. She wanted entertainment law, and she wanted in-house experience.
"If you're on the entertainment side, especially with music, it's changing what you're doing, it's not the same repetitive thing," she said. "From day to day, everything is very interesting and different."
A family connection at WMG gave her an opening. "I had a family member who works at Warner. I emailed him and asked if there's anyone, he could connect me with in legal, just to ask general questions about the internship," she said, "because a description online can only tell you so much."
That single email turned into an informational interview with the attorney supervising the program and, from there, an offer to join the team for the summer.
No Two Days Alike
Avila expected to spend her summer buried in trademark filings. Instead, she found herself pulled into nearly every corner of WMG's legal operation.
"I was able to network with different attorneys on the legal team: employment, M&A, compliance, data privacy, litigation, basically everyone, and openly ask them if they had any projects I could work on," she said.
She drafted an employment contract and exclusivity carve-out that were put into actual use. She dug into copyright infringement discovery on cases against major retailers. She researched a Department of Justice antitrust case involving Ticketmaster and Live Nation. She even sat in on a live mediation.
"I think that was my biggest surprise, the amount and variety of work I got to do," she said.
Front-Row Seat to Music History
The highlight of the summer came from watching a landmark deal unfold from the inside: WMG's acquisition of the AI company Sureel AI.
"Getting to read over that contract was interesting, only because it's something no other music company has done so far," Avila said. "They're the first ones to do it, where it's very prioritized on protecting artists' rights and their image and likeness. Especially now, when you have AI that is infringing on their rights and making music with artists' voices and image and likeness."
The timing made it even more striking. While Avila was in the office, WMG was also backing the proposed federal NO FAKES Act, aimed at protecting artists from unauthorized AI replication, and it cleared a key Senate hurdle that same summer.
"It was really interesting to see government working with the law at the same time," she said, "and just being in a place where they focus on their artists more than anything else.”
A Career Clicking Into Place
For Avila, the summer wasn't just eventful, it was clarifying. Her undergraduate coursework in accounting and finance came alive while she worked alongside WMG's mergers and acquisitions team.
"Everything they were just saying flipped in my head, and I could visualize it," she said. "That's where it really clicked that I wanted to maybe pursue M&A."
She's carrying that momentum straight back into the classroom, enrolling this fall in Patent Law and Intellectual Property, and carrying forward a bigger lesson, too, about not being intimidated by the attorneys in the room.
"They were in your steps, too, and they're more than likely willing to help you and just give you advice," she said. "That's probably my biggest lesson, to not be scared of asking attorneys questions."
One email, one offer, and one very unusual summer later, Avila has a much clearer picture of where her law degree could take her, and a story most classmates will be hearing about for a while.