Renate Schmid worked for around 16 years as an in-house lawyer for the TV production company Sony Pictures Film und Fernsehproduktion GmbH in Cologne.

Prior to that, she was in-house counsel at the Franco-German TV channel ARTE. She has been a lawyer at WBS.LEGAL since 2014, where she works in particular in the areas of copyright and media law, press and personality rights as well as employment law and data protection. Renate Schmid has also trained as a business mediator and data protection officer. She is also a lecturer at the Mediengründerzentrum NRW and the Cologne Game Lab.