Sam Burum has been around basketball his entire life.

He started playing in Melbourne, Australia, where he lived until he was 12. After moving with his mom to Maryland, the 6-foot-7 forward continued playing in high school and then for St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

During the summers and after college, Burum returned to the suburbs of Melbourne to play for the Sandringham Sabres. Being part of the Australian semi-professional basketball team kept him in the game longer. It also helped him realize he wanted to stay in the sports industry.

Burum thought becoming a lawyer would help him get there.

“It clicked that going to law school could be a good way of finding an inroad into the sports world,” says Burum, a 2015 graduate of American University Washington College of Law. “A lot of different people in the sports universe that make their way up the ladder have a legal background.”

After practicing at Dechert in Washington, D.C., where he handled mergers and acquisitions and other corporate work, Burum got his foot in the door at Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment. He became associate counsel at the Camden, New Jersey-based company, which owns the Philadelphia 76ers and other professional sports teams.

In 2022, Burum brought his BigLaw and in-house experience and his knowledge of how to run an NBA team to the National Basketball Players Association in New York City. As counsel, one of his first tasks was to help negotiate the nearly 700-page collective bargaining agreement between the union and the NBA. He now helps enforce the agreement, which includes addressing health, discipline and other issues for players.

“I feel pretty lucky, because we are working directly with these players,” says Burum, who became the union’s deputy general counsel in 2024. “It’s so impactful, because we really care about the mission and trying to help them.”

Like Burum, many lawyers gravitate toward the industry because of their personal involvement in or passion for sports. They fill diverse roles, including representing teams and leagues in private practice, serving as in-house counsel for sports organizations, working as agents, and managing compliance for universities or athletic associations.

Lawyers are finding even more opportunities in the sports industry, which has evolved substantially in recent years. In 2024, its revenues reached $2.65 trillion, making it the ninth largest industry worldwide, according to Global Sports Insights. Experts say increased investment in sports; high-stakes litigation involving amateur and professional leagues; and the rise of name, image and likeness deals for college athletes help fuel this growth and create more demand for legal expertise.

“The issues have become far more complex, the stakes have become far more significant, and the players and participants have become far more global and institutional,” says Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and a leader of its sports practice. “We’re now seeing corporate interests and private equity, as well as the courts, play an increasingly visible role in reshaping the sports landscape.”

Lawyers, because of their skills in contract negotiation, dispute resolution and risk management, are inherently suited to navigate the industry’s complex legal and business issues. Some of the highest-profile leaders in professional sports have JDs. This includes Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner; Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner; and Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner.

“Roger Goodell, who is an extraordinarily successful commissioner [of the NFL], is not a lawyer,” Karp adds. “But he’s been surrounded by lawyers for decades and has earned a de facto JD degree.”

Lawyers get their start in the industry at different points in their careers. Some jump right in—like Karp, a self-described sports junkie who played hockey and golf at Union College in New York. He began working on matters for the NFL with prominent Paul Weiss partner Arthur Liman as a summer associate in 1983. More than 40 years later, he still handles an extensive amount of litigation and internal investigations for the league.

This includes serving as lead counsel in the NFL’s concussion litigation, which arose in 2011 after former players accused the league of failing to protect them from the long-term risks associated with head injuries. The NFL reached a settlement with players in 2015, agreeing to provide up to $5 million to each retired player with ALS, Alzheimer’s or other severe neurological conditions.

Karp also was involved in investigating bullying and harassment allegations at the Miami Dolphins in 2013 and circumstances surrounding the use of underinflated footballs by the New England Patriots during the AFC championship game in 2015.

“Find something that you love doing and become skilled at it,” Karp says when asked about the key to success in sports litigation. He also notes that lawyers should keep in mind that sports cases tend to attract more interest than typical commercial cases.

“Lots of folks are fans—intense fans—which creates a lot more public fascination with these sorts of matters,” says Karp, who also handles cases involving MLB, Major League Soccer and FIFA.

Other lawyers with burgeoning sports law practices took an indirect route to the field. Alicia Jessop was at Wolfe & Wyman, a midsize civil litigation firm in Irvine, California, in June 2011 when she started a sports law and business blog called Ruling Sports. She hoped to be a sports lawyer, but she graduated from Chapman University Fowler School of Law during the Great Recession two years earlier and couldn’t find any open positions.

“It was a bleak time opportunistically, but I knew I loved sports and writing, so I started a sports law blog mostly as a hobby,” says Jessop, whose dad had friends in the NFL when she was a kid. “I stayed up all night on June 30, 2011, designing RulingSports.com. The next day, the NBA locked out their players, so I had the perfect topic for my first blog.”

Jessop wrote about the NBA lockout, a work stoppage stemming from disputes between the league and the National Basketball Players Association over their collective bargaining agreement. She focused on the various labor law and antitrust remedies that were available to each side.

“There are a lot of attorneys who have practiced for decades who don’t understand the intricacies of [antitrust law], let alone the average sports fan,” Jessop says. “So I explained the lockout in a way that the average NBA fan could understand.”

Fast forward 14 years, and Ruling Sports is now a media platform that has been visited by millions of people, Jessop says. It unexpectedly led to work in journalism: She has covered sports law and business for the Washington Post, the Athletic and other publications. It also built her network of athletes and entrepreneurs and helped launch her sports law practice in Los Angeles in 2021.

Jessop represents professional athletes, agencies, broadcasters and startups in transactional matters, including business formation, contract drafting and negotiation, and trademark registrations. She is also a professor at Pepperdine University, where she teaches sports law.

“There are a lot of ways into this industry,” says Jessop, the co-chair of the ABA Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries’ Sports Division. “It’s a huge ecosystem, and it’s growing. The opportunities for careers are really robust if you’re creative.”

• Web Extra: How to become a sports lawyer

Many sports lawyers cite the importance of being flexible and open-minded, especially early in their careers.

Ryan Garka played football in high school, and while at the University of Virginia, he coached a local team for two seasons. That led to a recruiting internship with the university’s football team during his senior year, which he says sparked his interest in sports law.

After graduating, Garka worked as a compliance and administration intern for what was then the Colonial Athletic Association. He discovered that Georgia State University, a member of the conference, had a part-time law program. He also realized he could receive a tuition waiver if he became a marketing and compliance graduate assistant in the university’s athletics department. “It was an exciting time for GSU Athletics because the school had created a brand-new football program, and their first season was in 2010, ” says Garka, who helped the team’s head coach and former NFL player Bill Curry with several projects during his two years with the department.

After earning his JD in 2012, Garka worked with the corporate, finance and investments team at King & Spalding in Charlotte, North Carolina. His goal was to go in-house, which he did six years later with International Speedway Corp. in Daytona Beach, Florida. He was associate general counsel, a position he also held at NASCAR after it acquired International Speedway. He is now the vice president and associate general counsel of the Ironman Group in Tampa, Florida.

Being persistent is a must in the competitive sports market, adds Garka, whose responsibilities at Ironman include negotiating sponsorship and consumer product licensing deals and overseeing domestic and international mergers and acquisitions.

“In all three of my legal jobs, I had either applied or interviewed, gotten rejected, and then a later posting came up, and I was hired the second time,” says Garka, a former co-chair of the ABA Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries’ Sports Division. “So for people who want to work in sports, persistence is key.”

For Anthony Mulrain, unexpected client connections brought him into sports law.

Mulrain, a 1995 graduate of Rutgers Law School, was representing a large, publicly traded media company in litigation about seven years into his career. His paralegal in the case asked him to share some advice with her sister, who turned out to be Tichina Arnold, one of the stars of the TV show Martin.

Arnold asked Mulrain to be her entertainment lawyer, which expanded his practice into the industry. Five years later, when Mulrain told Arnold he also wanted to work with athletes, she introduced him to Dwight Howard, the No. 1 pick in the 2004 NBA draft. Howard, who played for the Orlando Magic, asked Mulrain to handle corporate matters and litigation for him.

Cam Newton, the first overall pick by the Carolina Panthers in the 2011 NFL draft; and Justin Upton, the top pick by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2005 MLB draft, were among Mulrain’s next sports clients. And the list grew from there, he says.

“At this point, I’ve represented eight players that have been the No. 1 overall pick in their draft, and that’s six in basketball, one in baseball and one in football,” says Mulrain, a partner in the Atlanta office of Holland & Knight and co-chair of the firm’s Sports Law team.

Mulrain often represents sports clients in business matters, which includes providing counsel on venture capital and private equity investments. He also assists them with various ventures. For client and former NBA star Carmelo Anthony, that means representing his wine company.

“It’s sort of the entire gamut with athletes,” says Mulrain, who also represents professional sports teams, leagues and agencies. He says this provides insight into what each side values in a deal or case.

“I’ve got a 360-degree view to what everybody at the table is thinking, and I’ve found those things, along with a mix of a transactional and litigation background, to be really helpful,” Mulrain says. His passion for sports also extends beyond his legal practice—when his son was in seventh grade, he coached his AAU basketball team to a national championship.

Lawyers say their JD can open doors in the sports industry, even if they decide not to practice law.

This was the case for Jason Belzer, a walk-on track athlete and football player at Rutgers University who studied sport management. After interning for a couple agencies, he realized there were barriers to becoming an agent, including licensing and certification requirements.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to figure out a way to get around that,’” says Belzer, who in 2008 founded GAME Inc., a sports agency that focuses on the career management and marketing of coaches. “By working with coaches, there was no licensing. There was no exam. I literally just cold-emailed, cold-called every college basketball coach in the country.”

Belzer decided to go to Rutgers Law School so he could “tell people that I’m a lawyer and that I’m the smartest agent out there.” He continued to build his company, which he says has represented dozens of Division I men’s and women’s basketball coaches.

After graduating in 2011, he also continued to build his personal brand by teaching sports law at his alma mater and writing about the sports business for Forbes.

“Being successful in the sports industry, particularly if you’re an entrepreneur, is about building relationships and about creating value,” says Belzer, who is based in New York City.

He later co-founded AthleticDirectorU, a digital media and professional development platform for college athletic administrators and coaches. He then founded Student Athlete NIL, which helps brands, universities and student athletes navigate name, image and likeness deals.

Because of his legal and business experience, Belzer says he was well-positioned to provide guidance on name, image and likeness licensing, which allows student athletes to earn money from endorsements, sponsorships and other commercial opportunities.

In 2021, the NCAA adopted an interim policy allowing student athletes to profit from third parties via name, image and likeness deals. And in June, a federal judge approved a multibillion-dollar settlement between the NCAA, its largest conferences and student athletes, which now allows schools to pay athletes directly.

“There is an opportunity, maybe the biggest opportunity in the history of sports, for attorneys to be able to offer advice to young individuals and help them through this process,” says Belzer, adding that he has negotiated more than $100 million in name, image and likeness deals.

Eric Nepomuceno uses his legal training every day as the senior deputy athletics director and chief operating officer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“In the NCAA, there’s a 400-page manual of bylaws that govern college athletics,” Nepomuceno says. “Lawyers put those together, so it can be dense. I feel like my educational background allows me to really digest that, evaluate that and then articulate that.”

“So if I’m talking to coaches, I can break it down and speak their language,” he adds. “If I’m talking to athletes, I can break it down and speak their language.”

Growing up in Queens, New York, Nepomuceno played baseball, soccer and basketball, and he got the chance to be a ball boy for the New York Jets. He studied sports management at the University of Michigan and then worked as a pro personnel assistant for the Jets.

“I thought I was going to be the next Jerry Maguire,” says Nepomuceno, who also worked as a legal counsel extern for the NFL while at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. “But that’s a really hard industry to break into. If you don’t know the next Michael Jordan or LeBron James, it’s not an easy endeavor.”

Nepomuceno graduated from law school in 2007 and decided against being a sports agent. He kept in touch with a classmate who suggested he consider a career in NCAA compliance. After interning with Queens College, he worked as the coordinator of eligibility and recruiting for Stony Brook University. He later joined Northeastern University, where he was the associate athletics director for compliance and enrollment services.

In UNLV’s Athletics Compliance Office, where Nepomuceno has been for more than seven years, he oversees all internal administration. He manages the compliance program, which includes rules education, enforcement and investigations. He works closely with the university’s general counsel’s office and assists with game contracts, vendor purchases and other legal matters.

“I’ve never stopped using my JD,” says Nepomuceno, who also is involved in the university’s name, image and likeness efforts. He has seen more lawyers show interest in NCAA compliance because of the recent changes in this area. In fact, he says, he recently hired two other people with JDs and started a legal externship program in his department.

“I actually have a legal extern who is looking for a compliance job, because after they had this experience for a couple of semesters, they realized this is how they want to apply their JD,” Nepomuceno says.

Sports lawyers predict other changes in their field will drive the need for legal work.

This includes the rise in popularity and investment in women’s sports, says Kate Porter, the general counsel of Bay FC, the National Women’s Soccer League team in the San Francisco Bay area. In only its second season, Bay FC is just one of many new women’s teams that have emerged across various sports.

“For the first time, there is a real sense of growth in the women’s game,” says Porter, who was the head of the sports law practice at Vela Wood in Dallas before joining the team. “Sponsors and investors are seeing the value that women’s sports have and are starting to devote funds and attention to the games, and that’s led to the increase of attention on these sports and the growth of the leagues.”

Porter, because of her vantage point in the soccer world, also expects more opportunities to arise for lawyers before and during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. It will be held next summer in the United States, Canada and Mexico; it will be the first time the tournament is co-hosted by three nations. It also will have an expanded field, featuring more teams and more games.

Lawyers in the 16 different cities where those games will be played are needed for myriad tasks, including advising on stadium construction, sponsorship agreements and brand protection, Porter says. She adds that immigration issues also will be front and center.

“There is going to be a lot of news around visas and ensuring attendees are able to get the required permissions to attend the event,” says Porter, another co-chair of the ABA Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries’ Sports Division. “There will be more people attending this World Cup than have ever attended any other World Cup in history.”

Another area leading to increased legal work is private equity investment in sports.

In 2024, NFL owners voted to allow private equity firms to buy stakes in teams. Other professional sports leagues—including the MLB, NBA and NHL—had already changed their ownership rules to permit private equity investment.

Andrew Nightingale, of counsel with Covington &
Burling in New York City, was part of the team that represented the NFL during what he describes as the most significant change to its ownership rules in decades. He spent months working with the NFL to develop its policy, speaking with the league and private equity firms to identify potential challenges and reaching agreements with interested funds.

“Four or five years ago, there was a shift in thinking across most of the leagues, that with the rising valuations of clubs, accessing private equity capital might be advantageous for the league and the club owners,” says Nightingale, who while previously at Proskauer Rose had assisted the NBA, NHL and Major League Soccer in developing and implementing their private investment fund policies.

Lawyers are paying attention to this shift in rules and the opportunities that come with new investments in professional sports teams, adds Nightingale, a longtime sports fan who represents leagues, teams and owners in various corporate matters. “The inflow of private equity capital and other institutional investors is something that’s at the top of everyone’s mind,” he says.

The increasing recognition of sports as an asset class for investors has led to other opportunities for lawyers, says Wayne Kimmel, the managing partner of SeventySix Capital, a venture capital company he founded in 1999 to invest in sports technology companies.

In recent years, Kimmel’s company also began investing in companies in the sports betting industry, an area where he says legal skills are in high demand.

“It’s a highly regulated industry, and having the understanding of the laws and making sure everything is truly compliant is really important,” says Kimmel, who graduated from Widener University Delaware Law School in 1995.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, gaming has become a significant part of the sports industry, Kimmel notes. (See “Big Bet,” page 32, December-January 2023-2024.) Currently, 38 states permit sports betting, and several others have introduced bills to legalize the practice.

“There’s so much more to come around this, and to be able to be part of this industry in the future is a big opportunity for current and future lawyers,” Kimmel says.