Barnes & Thornburg Recruits Sports Vets for New Athletics Practice
As collegiate players look to build their market power, the firm is looking beyond Big Law to capture new business in the sports world.
October 02, 2019 at 03:33 PM
4 minute read
Barnes & Thornburg has formed a new university and professional athletics practice led by of counsel Ellis T. "Skip" Prince and sports management adviser Steve Pederson, both new additions to the firm.
The Am Law 200 firm is headquartered in Indianapolis, home to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, but the practice will be organized in Washington, D.C. Prince said he and Roscoe Howard, Barnes & Thornburg's D.C. managing partner and a former member of the NCAA committee on infractions, have known each other since law school.
Prince helped form the Arena Football League and was a senior vice president at the National Hockey League for 10 years, and Pederson has nearly 20 years of experience as an athletic director at both the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Nebraska. Prince said he and Pederson "have been looking long and hard" to establish the new practice.
"We started almost a year ago trying to figure out how to create a synthetic relationship with management and consulting," Prince said. "Barnes & Thornburg was the choice all along."
Other members of the new group include Howard, also a former U.S. attorney; partner Billy Martin, a veteran trial lawyer and sports attorney; Christopher Bayh, a partner in the higher education practice group and Indiana University football alumnus; partner Meena Sinfelt, a complex litigation and compliance attorney; and associate David Frazee.
Pederson said no single development prodded them to launch the new practice now. But discussions about federal policy affecting athletes' pay and investigations of institutional practices have underlined the urgency of these issues and made D.C. a logical place for the practice.
"What's happened is the stakes are much higher than they have ever been before," Pederson said.
Prince said the line differentiating professional from amateur sports has been eroding, as the NCAA is no longer drawing attention during Saturdays in the fall and surrounding the Final Four in March, but all year round.
What sets Barnes & Thornburg's new group apart, Howard said, is the presence of Prince and Pederson—with deep experience in professional sports and NCAA athletics—combined with the firm's existing focus on university labor and employment matters, athlete representation, buildings and facilities work, and a preexisting universities practice.
New legislation out West could also drive business to sports and university athletics practices. On Monday, in the face of intense opposition from the NCAA, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a measure into law that provides players the opportunity to receive endorsement deals. The leadership of the NCAA had previously threatened California schools with a postseason ban if the state went through with its amateurism reform legislation.
Pederson said he didn't think the legal practice implications of California's move were yet clear, while Howard noted that Barnes & Thornburg's national footprint positioned the firm to handle matters related to the California law and any copycat legislation elsewhere.
Prince said the latest developments at the college level and in California remind him of the emergence of player rights and the increase in individual player's bargaining power on the professional side.
"Nobody can forecast what's going to happen," Pederson said. "But we know that something's going to happen."
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