“This definitely is as much about the prohibitive costing, as it is about the idea of feeling safe enough and understood enough,” says lawyer and founder of the law firm Artistik License, Manojna Yeluri.
She is talking to Music Ally about her ‘Coffee for Contracts’ initiative, which sees her offering pro bono legal support to creative professionals every July.
Since 2018, she’s been inviting musicians, writers, designers and the like to get in touch with her to ask and discuss “the legal questions, challenges, and uncertainties they’re navigating”. They can either send her an email, set up an online “coffee date” of around 45 minutes, or—if they happen to be in Bengaluru where she’s based—request to meet and have an actual coffee together.
For Yeluri, Coffee for Contracts is “an annual opportunity to better understand the barriers artists encounter, and the realities of building creative lives across different contexts”. The conversations and the things she learns from them inform Artistik License’s guides and workshops.
She makes clear however that the entire exercise is “intentionally informal” and “purely educational” and does not establish a “lawyer-client relationship”. If anyone who reaches out to her feels they need more extensive legal help, they can formally engage Artistik License’s services.
Over the years, Yeluri has found that “for many musicians, this is their first time talking to a lawyer or a lawyer outside the one provided by their label or management”, she says.
There’s data to back this up. Indian “music and creative industry development hub” Neon Culture’s 2025 Music City report, which surveyed over 200 musicians and music industry professionals in Bengaluru and Kochi, found that only 23% and 29% of the respondents in those places said they “have a lawyer on my team”.
Among the areas emerging musicians want to know more about are “how to better understand their rights and royalties” and “how to unpack specific management or record label contracts”. More experienced artists have also sought advice on how to structure their entrepreneurial ventures, “from indie labels to foundations”.
Recently, there’s been an increase in the number of women and queer artists participating in Coffee for Contracts.
“Many of them have said that they have a tough time with the intense patriarchal nature of the industry and its ways,” says Yeluri, who has built the initiative on “the belief that when we better understand the legal, socio-economic and political realities artists and practitioners face, we build a stronger creative ecosystem for everyone”.
The submission window for the 2026 edition of Coffee for Contracts closes on 31 July. See here for details.
