Sally A. Buckman

Sally Buckman serves as the Manager of Lerman Senter. She specializes in regulatory and business issues facing companies in the media industry. Sally has represented clients involved in all facets of media, including large publicly traded broadcast companies, group owners, large and small family-owned media companies, a national radio network, investment companies, lenders, and on-air talent.

Sally has extensive experience in handling transactions and complex agreements for media companies. She has represented numerous clients in the acquisition and sale of media properties ranging in value from $75,000 to more than $1 billion. She also drafts and negotiates syndication and programming agreements, retransmission consent agreements, sports rights agreements, tower leases, and other business documents for media companies. Sally particularly enjoys helping clients structure complex transactions to ensure compliance with FCC ownership restrictions, and navigating the intricacies of complex operational agreements.

Sally’s interest in communications law and the media industry stems from her undergraduate major in economics with a focus on regulated industries, and her work in journalism, which included serving as Editor-In-Chief of her college newspaper. Sally relishes the opportunity to apply her knowledge about business and management in her role as Manager of the firm.

Recently, Sally helped one of the premiere PBS television stations in the country purchase its first noncommercial radio station. Her team’s work included drafting and negotiating a purchase agreement, programming services agreement and related documents and preparing and prosecuting the necessary FCC applications. Sally also represented one of a group of media company intervenors in a Petition for Certiorari with the Supreme Court in support of an FCC decision relaxing and eliminating certain multiple ownership rules applicable to broadcasters. The petition resulted in a unanimous decision in favor of the FCC and the media company intervenors that reversed a decision of the Third Circuit, and led to the FCC reinstating rule changes beneficial to broadcasters and newspaper companies.

Sally has been selected to Washington, D.C. Super Lawyers in the field of Communications Law (2014-2024) and included in Best Lawyers in America in Communications Law (2016-2025). Chambers and Partners ranks Sally as a top practitioner in the Telecom, Broadcast and Satellite practice area. She is on the Board of Integrated Living Opportunities, a non-profit organization in the D.C. area whose mission is to help young adults with developmental disabilities transition to independent living by creating networks of support, enabling them to become integrated members of their wider communities.