Licensed to practice law in the states of California and Texas, John Cones, maintains a private solo practice advising independent feature film, video and television producer clients regarding federal and state securities law compliance obligations in passive investor corporate, limited partnership and investment contract offerings and related entertainment law matters. He prepares the "camera ready" offering disclosure documents for such offerings, serves as a liaison to managing and selling broker/dealers and prepares or aids his clients in negotiating entertainment contracts, including feature film distribution agreements.

Mr. Cones is a 1967 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications and a 1974 graduate of the UT Austin School of Law with a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree.

Prior to 1975 Mr. Cones was a Radio-Television News Reporter at KTBC (Channel 7) television, Austin where he worked at varying times as a television news anchor, general & film assignments, sports and weather. Mr. Cones worked at KTBC full-time while attending law school at UT Austin. He had also performed on-the-air duties previously at KRIS-TV Corpus Christi & KITE radio in San Antonio.

In 1975 he served as legislative counsel to the Texas House of Representatives. In that position he drafted, edited and reviewed state legislation, counseled legislator sponsors with respect to constitutional requirements and supervised union proof-readers.

During the years 1976 through 1981, Mr. Cones worked as a lobbyist association executive and in- house counsel for professional associations headquartered in Austin and Chicago. In those positions he prepared and delivered congressional testimony, drafted legislation, wrote and edited books, magazines, newsletters, speeches and press releases; was involved in long term planning, board meetings, conventions, seminars, staff supervision and the associations' membership activities.

Mr. Cones engaged in the private practice of law in Houston and Dallas from 1981 through 1986. In that practice he supervised state securities compliance aspects of Regulation D (private placement) limited partnership and corporate offerings (including movie production/distribution, oil and gas, real estate, equipment leasing, night clubs, restaurants, cattle breeding/feeding, thorough-bred breeding and medical technology. In his securities law practice, Mr. Cones has participated in the preparation of disclosure documents and the supervision of federal/state compliance for 130+ public or private limited partnership, investment contract or corporate stock offerings. In addition, he has worked with clients who sought active investor financing of their entertainment projects utilizing investor financing agreements and joint venture entities. Mr. Cones moved his law practice to California in 1987 specifically to work with independent film, television, video and theatrical producers in the manner described above.

Mr. Cones is the author of state and national association magazine articles and his law journal article "Feature Film Limited Partnerships" was published in the January 1992 edition of the Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Journal. He is also the author of a book entitled Film Finance and Distribution--A Dictionary of Terms, a dictionary with more than 3,600 entries relating to film finance and distribution in which such terms are defined, discussed and explained. The terms in this monograph were extracted from this larger work. He also wrote the Entertainment Law & Finance article "Maximizing Producers' Negative Pick- Up Profits" (June 1992).

He has lectured extensively (in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dallas, Houston and San Francisco) on "Investor Financing of Entertainment Projects" for the American Film Institute, the University of Southern California Cinema-Television Alumni Association, UCLA Extension, Loyola Marymount Continuing Education Division, Cinetex '90 and other film industry organizations. Mr. Cones has also presented a one-day UCLA Extension sponsored seminar on "The Film Distribution Deal" and appeared as a guest speaker on film finance and distribution in the UCLA extension evening courses "Financing Feature Film Production" and "Contractual Aspects of Producing, Financing and Distributing Film".

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