Client Spotlight: Sports Lawyers Association

VIRTUAL INC CLIENT SPOTLIGHT

Q&A with Professional Services Client, Sports Lawyers Association (SLA)

What is the Sports Layers Association?
SLA: The Sports Lawyers Association is an organization of lawyers working in all aspects of the sports industry from labor to management, college to professional, education, products, facilities, events, integrity, and everything else that touches upon sport. While we seek to be the preeminent association for sports law, it is our mission to connect established and aspiring leaders in the sports law field and to elevate the expertise and reach of the profession.

What types of members do you have and what do they do?
SLA: Our membership is made up of attorneys primarily, although we have some non-lawyer members, across all disciplines in our field. In addition, the organization welcomes aspiring sports lawyers and we have a significant membership among law students.

We have seen a significant shift in athletics over the last 16 months – how has your organization adapted?
SLA: The entire world has adjusted during the COVID crisis. At the SLA we expanded our content outreach by adding a variety of programs, from podcasts to webinars to bi-weekly discussions (Sports Shorts) with lawyers and non-lawyers in the sports industry. These podcasts & webinars can be found on our website slalive.tv. Without live sports and then with limited or no spectators at contests, we addressed these changes through a variety of now content so that our membership could share information on the sorts of challenges confronting the industry. As our annual conference is a must-attend event, we created a virtual conference with the goal of keeping the attendees connected, engaged and able to meet virtually with other attendees.

What makes the Sports Lawyers Association different from other Professional Societies?
SLA: It is a welcoming sort of engagement. At our annual conference the attendees know that they will have access not just to all of the attendees, but to all of the speakers. Part of the ethos of the SLA is that those of us who work in the space, understand how fortunate we are to work in this field that we love, and our goal is to help guide others on a path that can hopefully help them find their place in the industry.

What is next for SLA?
SLA: We will continue to expand our content offerings and fulfill our goal of elevating the expertise and reach of the profession. To that end we are working at being more responsive to hot topics and issues as they arise to make our organization the go-to place to hear well-informed thoughts on the most current topics in sports. We are moving ahead with a return to our live, in-person annual conference next May and expect a huge turnout from all of our members that long for the sort of connections that our conference has always delivered. In short, what’s next is an expansion of what we have been doing to continue driving better engagement with and benefits for our current and prospective membership.

About Sports Lawyers Association

The Sports Lawyers Association is a non-profit, international, professional organization whose common goal is the understanding, advancement and ethical practice of sports law. There are over 1,000 current members: practicing lawyers, law educators, law students, and other professionals with an interest in law relating to professional and amateur sports.

For more information about Sports Lawyers Association, www.sportslaw.org, or call +1 703-234-4071