Robert A. Bertsche
Partner
Robert A. Bertsche is a nationally known media lawyer with a litigation and transactional practice. He is devoted to protecting clients’ First Amendment, intellectual property, business and employment interests.
A former newspaper and magazine journalist, Rob offers counseling and litigation services to the gamut of media clients throughout the United States: magazines, newspapers, book publishers, broadcasters, website operators, bloggers, cable television providers and advertising agencies. His practice includes the following:
- Prepublication and prebroadcast review for magazines, newspapers, websites and broadcasters
- Negotiating and drafting freelance and other media contracts
- Defending media clients against claims of libel, invasion of privacy, copyright and trademark infringement, breach of contract, and related actions
- Conducting workplace trainings to help the media stay out of court
- Prosecuting access challenges under federal and state law
- Helping clients draft and enact policies relating to confidential sources, ethics, blogging and data privacy
- Defending reporters against subpoenas seeking confidential sources or notes
- Assessing website compliance with state and federal legal requirements
A sampling of Rob’s work illustrates the breadth of his practice. In early 2008, when a newspaper was barred from a hospital-room arraignment, Rob obtained from the Supreme Judicial Court a stay that was lifted only after the judge relented and let the press in. He helped obtain reversal from the First Circuit Court of Appeals of a million-dollar libel judgment against a newspaper reporter. He has successfully challenged gag orders against the press, and won orders permitting press access to court and government documents and proceedings.
Rob has represented media in cases establishing new Massachusetts law: applying the “single publication rule” to websites, demonstrating that police officers are “public officials” for libel law purposes and establishing that public high school students have editorial discretion over their publications. He has litigated copyright and trademark infringement cases; represented cartoonists, bloggers and television talk show hosts in court; and defended newspapers, magazines and other clients in employment cases alleging discrimination, harassment and wrongful discharge. Working pro bono, he successfully defended a student editor at a several-day defamation trial, won sanctions against a public official who claimed he was libeled by a community affairs website that parodied him, and helped a small Connecticut newspaper mount a public meetings challenge against its local school board.
Rob has also drafted freelance contracts for newspapers and magazines across the country; vetted advertising and sweepstakes; counseled media clients regarding circulation audits; advised artists, photographers, writers and artists on copyright and fair use law; and conducted prepublication review of countless newspaper and magazine articles, as well as books on topics ranging from a former U.S. secretary of state to lessons on business ethics. He established and oversees an active legal hotline for the 450-plus newspaper members of the New England Press Association.
In his employment practice, Rob counsels employers on issues including terminations, sexual harassment, wage and hour laws, and independent contractor status, and defends them in state and federal court, and at the administrative level, against harassment, discrimination, retaliation, defamation, breach of contract, wrongful discharge and other common-law and statutory claims. He writes an annual survey of Massachusetts employment libel law that is circulated to lawyers nationwide.
Rob is a member of the New England Society of Professional Journalists advisory board, general counsel to the New England Press Association, founder of the New England Media Law Group and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Since 2002, the American Society of Magazine Editors has selected Rob to present its annual business and editorial law training for magazines nationwide. He is a visiting lecturer in the communications and media studies program at Tufts University, where he teaches “Media Law and Ethics in a Digital World.” For almost two decades, he has authored the annual survey of First Circuit libel law published by the New York-based Media Law Resource Center. He also writes the outline of Massachusetts public access law published by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Before attending law school, Rob worked as city editor of the daily Transcript-Telegram newspaper in Holyoke, Massachusetts; attended the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and later was on the founding staff of New England Monthly magazine, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. After law school, Rob was an associate, then partner, at the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow until it closed in 2003.
Bar Admissions- Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania
- United States District Court of Massachusetts
- First Circuit Court of Appeals
- United States Supreme Court
Education- Harvard Law School, J.D., magna cum laude, 1989
- Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course, 1986
- Wesleyan University, B.A., magna cum laude, 1980
Noteworthy- AV® Peer Review Rated
- July 2009: Named a "Super Lawyer" in the field of First Amendment/Media/Advertising Law in Super Lawyers, Corporate Counsel Edition
- 2005-present: Listed in The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward/White), Media and First Amendment Law
- 2004-2008: Named a Massachusetts "Super Lawyer" by Law and Politics (published in Boston magazine)
Memberships- American Bar Association
- American Bar Foundation
- Boston Bar Association
- Copyright Society
- Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania Bar Associations
- Media Law Resource Center
- National Newspaper Association
- New England First Amendment Center, Advisory Board Member
- Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
- Student Press Law Center
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