Former soap opera actress Michelle Fenton ’99 is now the star of the legal department at a prestigious New York music publishing company.

Fenton is director of legal affairs and operations for Jellybean Recordings Inc., the publishing company for pop icon Madonna.

Although Fenton said her current position does not require a law degree, it is an advantage, and her experience at Quinnipiac helped prepare her for the work she’s doing. She supervises business and legal affairs, working on contract negotiations and reviewing contractual agreements related to licensing, copyrights, publishing and intellectual property rights. She also oversees the legal team as it resolves issues out of court or in litigation.

“At Quinnipiac, I wanted to focus on entertainment law, but there weren’t a lot of classes in it, so I tried to take (related) classes, such as contracts, a copyright class and I took communications law and media law,” Fenton said.

She named Associate Dean David King and William Dunlap as her favorite professors. “Both were available to the students and taught using the Socratic Method, which brought life to the classroom.”

For her first two years at Quinnipiac, Fenton took night classes. During the day, she went to auditions and performed in soaps and in numerous TV shows, including “Sex and the City,” “The Cosby Mysteries” and “100 Center Street.”

“It was funny, because I was playing a law student, and Alan Arkin came up to me and said, ‘Oh, wow, you’re really good at this. You pick up the legalese, the lingo,’” she said, adding that she replied, “‘I hope so. I’m really in law school.’”