Senior Adviser
William Nix
William Nix joined Avalon in 2013. He offers our clients his extensive corporate and operations expertise in the entertainment, media, sports, intellectual property and creativity fields as an senior executive, corporate attorney, litigator and ADR practitioner.
Mr. Nix served as Co-Chair of BakerBotts LLP’s Entertainment, Media and Sports Practice Group, as VP of Legal and Business Affairs for NBA Properties and as COO of the network of nearly 2,000 employees and representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America's global Content Protection Group. He has worked closely with Internet/Software businesses as a strategist and operational advisor for many years and had extensive experience with corporate financing, governance, intellectual property and regulatory issues. He is also an experienced producer of original film, television, Internet/new media and digital content.
Mr. Nix has taught in the public schools of Washington, D.C., as well as graduate level law school and other domestic/international courses. He serves as a regular professional panelist and speaker, and has published and been widely interviewed on television, radio and in print. He is a lifetime voting Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and a member of its Educational Grants Committee. He is also a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Science (ATAS), the National Academy of Recording Arts and Science (NARAS), the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) and a documentary and feature film producer who has served on the Nominating Screening Juries for the International Documentary Association (IDA) and the Best Foreign Film Oscar and Student Academy Awards nominating committees for AMPAS.
He currently serves on the Board of Advisors of Paramount Business Jets; as Chairperson of the Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel's (AMEC) Law School Advisory Board; is an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine Law School's Straus Institute, and also as Industry Advisor to its Entertainment, Media & Sports Dispute Resolution Project. He is a former member of the Board of Advisors of the Austin Film Festival, a writer-oriented festival, and the former Chairman of the Greenwich Film Festival in Connecticut.
His educational background includes post-graduate studies in the UCLA entertainment media program for Producers, concentrating on Film, Television and Digital Production. He has an LL.M. in Competition, Innovation and Information Law from New York University's School of Law and an A.B. in English/History from Georgetown University. His academic background also includes Columbia University's Parker School of Foreign & Comparative Law and Harvard Law School's Advanced Program in Negotiation Studies. He is a certified Association of Film Commissioners International (AFCI) Film Commission Professional.