Judge Judy has made more than 6,000 judicial decisions in her 25 years on TV. But does she have any legal weight? You might be surprised at the answer. In this episode, we talk about transgender athletes, the complexities of NFT ownership, and being the only Black law student in the room.
Transcript:
Speaker 1 (00:01.304)
Disney will crack down on a lawyer in a small town that puts Mickey Mouse on the outside of their building in a minute. They don't play, so.
This is Real Cases, a legal podcast presented by the Stetson University College of Law. We'll sit down with Stetson Law faculty and students to examine today's critical cases and debates in environmental, international, elder, and business law, plus the role of social justice in these fields. Join us as we open the case file. I'm Dustin Britt, Master of Arts in Education from East Carolina University. My guest is Darryl C. Wilson.
Associate Dean for Faculty and Strategic Initiatives at Stetson University College of Law. He's also the Director of the Institute of Caribbean Law and Policy. Dean Wilson earned his JD at the University of Florida and specializes in alternative dispute resolution, intellectual property, and international law. He's taught throughout the Caribbean, as well as in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Dean Wilson has authored books on real property law and sports law and is certified as an NFL Players Association Contract Advisor. He advises several student societies at Stetson, including the Black Law Students Association.
Speaker 2 (01:28.6)
Thank you, Dean Wilson, for joining us today. I wanted to start off by asking you, I know that one of your areas of expertise is alternative dispute resolution. So for those who might not know about it, what is ADR and when does it apply?
Well, ADR, as I call it still, I guess from being an old person, I'm told now it's just called VR, but it's it was called ADR because it stood for alternative to court. So alternative dispute resolution means trying to resolve disputes outside of going through the judicial process. That would be most commonly mediation.
and arbitration. So today, pretty much in every jurisdiction, if you file an accident court, they have mediation. Most places that's mandatory, at least that the parties try and talk to each other and resolve it.
today in practice, certainly in business and to some extent now even more so, which is surprising that it's part of criminal law. They have arbitration that is sometimes mandatory in business, usually because it's put in the contracts that the parties have executed between themselves. And as I said, in criminal law, comes up
sometimes mediation and or arbitration. But these are the realities of how the world's evolved. Litigation in courts takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. And so it started out that people were looking at these alternatives as ways to make things go more quickly and be cheaper. But
Speaker 1 (03:36.32)
If it's a complicated matter with lots of parties, then it's still going to be fairly time consuming to sort things out and costly as well. But on the other hand, you do have an ability to avoid a lot of procedural requirements that are mandatory in a court setting. So the realities, again, as I said before of how the world's evolved is that
About 5% of cases actually go to court, to an actual court where there's attorneys on both sides and it's litigated decision that something's going to go to a courtroom who makes the decision. The parties, mean, everybody's guaranteed a right to court. You you hear that in a general discussion of the Constitution, they want to have the right to take a matter to court in case there's a dispute, be it criminal or civil. parties today often end up going to arbitration or more than that because of documents that they sign. And so sometimes they try and get out of going arbitration or mediation. And they might even go to court to try and avoid that. But the courts routinely uphold that. You can see it in anything from, you know, purchasing a house to purchasing cars, any type of consumer products.
Speaker 1 (05:22.796)
You know, consumer interactions, banking, insurance. We don't usually look at those documents very closely when we're signing them, but they generally have clauses that say no matter if there's a dispute, the matter will be resolved either by mediation or arbitration. Sometimes it'll be mandatory arbitration, which means that it'll be binding on the parties. Sometimes it's just a procedural step where the parties have to do that before they can actually go to court.
about the TV reality shows that are arbitration-based? the, know, Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, are those binding decisions?
Usually they are those parties have signed some documents before they show up that they're willing to be bound by the decisions of a judge.
want to shift over to intellectual property, another area that you've worked in extensively. What are some growing trends in IP law as technology changes and entertainment changes and media changes? Things must be growing rapidly, I would assume.
Speaker 1 (06:37.614)
Yeah, I mean, I think it went from something that people really didn't talk about at all, even though it's part of the US Constitution, to something that nobody can seem to stop talking about in terms of showing they're with it or hip to how the countries and the world is continually to evolve. So since we are now in 24-7 communicative communications context as far as global citizenry is concerned, then everything that's related to social media and communications is part of IP issues. have environmental issues that come into play, biotech, biomedicine. You have copyright issues.
because copyright spans all of entertainment. have no patents. What types of things are patentable? And all of this is peppered with AI concerns. What does AI really mean? Every new fad that comes up brings about new IP areas for development or exploration. NFTs, know, what's an NF?
And then it's just being interwoven with the fabric of, again, so many different aspects of how people around the world contact each other. type of stuff. you know, IP is people are recognizing how broad it is. So, you know.
Trademarks are different, the patents are different than copyrights. And then you have sui generis types of areas that deal with technology, chips and semiconductor chips. Well, I guess there's, don't know if they're still semiconductor, but they're technology chips, I'll call it. Space law, you know, all of that.
Speaker 2 (08:58.156)
What kind of legal challenges have arisen because of the growth of NFTs? What kind of things are coming in to arbitration or into the courtroom?
Well, I mean, the definition of NFT and the regulation of it, you know, are the two main things that I see right now. You know, people invest a lot of money and see on them and then, know, exactly what is it that they're getting is a question that is ongoing. So.
I don't have any specifics right now. Just know that there's the sale of them. That really brings up more trademark stuff than, some of the other areas like AI is more more patent oriented. But right now, have these some of the luxury brands were bringing these lawsuits.
about the digital representation of products of theirs that are being sold as NFTs, digital artworks, digital handbags. All of these things are protected by copyrights and trademarks. Some of the companies are filing infringement lawsuits over these NFTs.
That's the main thing that I see right now.
Speaker 2 (10:46.808)
I wanted to look at some other areas of your practice that might be applicable to law students looking into what type of law they might like to practice. I know that you've worked as an in-house counsel before to a company, I believe. What's the experience of being in-house counsel for a corporate entity?
Well, that depends on the size of the corporate entity. people think that when you say you're in house counsel, that you're going to be part of a big law firm that is all under one corporate umbrella. And so maybe you get a job at McDonald's being an attorney for McDonald's. Well, McDonald's does have a
a major corporate campus. And on that corporate campus, they do have a law building and they have lawyers, a laundry list of lawyers in there. But, you know, I think that people really talk to me about it. We mentioned it just in passing, entertainment and sports. You might also get it.
in-house counsel job at Disney. Disney has a lot of lawyers, but you might want a job as in-house counsel at the NFL or for an NFL team. Most professional sports teams only have one lawyer in-house. So I was in-house counsel at a hair care company and it was a smaller hair care company. So we had three.
in-house counsel there as opposed to some of the rev lines at the time and things like that who had a floor full of attorneys.
Speaker 2 (12:46.759)
Under your casebook on sports law, what are some examples of cases that you think are important for law students to study and understand when it comes to practicing sports law?
People who want to say do sports a lot, don't necessarily know what that means. I see them at recruitment fairs and even students here, they think sports law equates to hanging out with athletes and that's not it. So if you want to do sports a lot, I tell students when I'm advising them that you need to pick an area like intellectual property. If that's you have to gain an expertise that's
strong enough that individuals will say, okay, we'll hire this person because they can help us with branding, marketing, infringement issues, main changes from Redskins to commanders and all sorts of things of that nature. But that might not be what interests the person. So you can give them other options. You want to do labor law.
There's collective bargaining agreements that you hear people talking about. need to know what labor law is. You need to know what antitrust law is if you want to be in from that aspect. If you want to do property for them, not only intellectual property, but real property. There's a lot of stadium deals and all of the employees that work within stadiums.
the franchises that are going to try and be partners, and then again, know, sorts of advertising connections and so forth. So those are the big areas in the sports field. There's Title IX issues and amateurism issues.
Speaker 1 (14:54.22)
Maybe you just want to do Olympic related stuff, doping, track and field and other athletic events where doping is a big issue. But I guess right now we're going to have the latest will be transgender issues.
Where do you think that's headed? Legally.
I mean, it's just going to it's it's it's already there. It's either going to be individual court cases or general legislation by by states. I don't know what they're going to do with it by on an international basis. But the international. Reflects to a lot of things that are going on in the news is a is a dispositive of what's going to be.
the bright line rule in the long term. So there's different options. I was sent some information to an individual who had never heard of what's pejoratively called, even though they did start it out that way, is the gay Olympics. So there is an Olympics that is every few years just like the regular Olympics that's
focused on LGBT athletes. But of course, being LGBT doesn't prevent athletes from, well, being gay hasn't prevented athletes from participating in the regular Olympics. And it doesn't stop people from participating in sports at a local
Speaker 1 (16:46.594)
high school, collegiate level, anything like that. We don't have separate athletic events for gay students, but the transgender thing, you know, that's a little bit different because of the genetic issues involved. So we'll see where most people end up on that issue.
You see that as eventually being something that's going to be decided by the courts as opposed to decided by legislation or individual corporate entities like the Olympics.
No, I don't think it'll be decided by courts on a broad level. I think more of the sports agencies and entities will resolve it on their own.
When I was a kid, I played on a Little League team and we called ourselves the White Sox. And we had the White Sox branding on all of our stuff. How did we get away with that?
So, you know, first of all, probably didn't have enough notoriety for it to be worth. I can confirm that. Yeah. So I think, you know, people want to know a lot of times and they come in, if they know that somebody has some expertise, the question I'll get is just your question a little bit reverse. We want to do this. We want to do that.
Speaker 1 (18:28.078)
Do think we can get away with it? you know, I've done trademark registrations for individuals and they didn't want to continue to maintain it because you can get trademarks that are perpetual in nature. They can last for a lifetime and beyond. But you have to pay maintenance fees. And they say, you know, we're just a little shop over here off the road. Do you think it's worth it? And, you know, I told them, well,
I'm not here to make that decision for you. You have to make that decision. And many times they won't continue to keep the registration or the maintenance fees up and that allows somebody else to maybe do the same thing. But again, it probably wasn't worth it to say I'm from Chicago. So the Chicago White Sox wouldn't really care too much.
And when we think about it, too, I tell people all the time that there's lots and lots of teams across the country that share the same name. So it's only when it looks like you are going to cut into somebody else's market in a manner that's financially impactful that that eyebrows start getting raised and cease and desist letters start getting written. But beyond that, you know.
Most people are small fries trying to piggyback on a little bit of variety here and there.
Literally small fries. I can't imagine Chicago White Sox worrying about Knightdale, North Carolina for a minute.
Speaker 1 (20:03.862)
You can't, but know, speaking of lawyers in house, being busy, mean, Disney will crack down on a lawyer in a small town who puts a Mickey Mouse on the outside of their building in a minute. They don't play, so.
I've noticed something similar with YouTube. We talk about Disney a lot in terms of enforcing a lot of copyright claims. There are companies that seem to allow their media to be uploaded by individuals on YouTube and some companies like Disney that are very, very strict about it. Where do you see the difference in how and when a company might be so protective that they wouldn't want to share it outside of their own model?
established company who's looking to branch out into some various social media platforms, they want to control it because now they are established, they already have money, prestige and things of that nature. They're looking at it as a possible additional revenue stream. But if it's going to be harmful, then they wouldn't want that to happen. And they certainly don't want to be taking up all of their time.
you know, arguing over over those types of things. again, it's it's it's the company structure that tends to dictate that. Disney's what, you know, a hundred years old and more. So, well, not quite that old, but it seems like it. and so.
Yeah, they they feel like they have a lot more to protect. I noticed that CNN had tried a little streaming, but only for a couple of months or so. And they decided that too much work, you know, as opposed to. know, a Twitter who's fighting off a takeover bid by Tesla.
Speaker 2 (22:12.812)
Another is a black law Students Association at Stetson. What are the unique needs and goals of black law students?
Well, mean, they, I guess the biggest, the easiest sort of response to that that you hear most of them say would be, you know, equality. whereas people might say, well, we take that for granted. I mean, they're going to be students, they'll be equal to all the rest of the students.
that's not necessarily felt as true amongst minorities. We have several, now we have at least 300, maybe 300 Black students who have graduated from Stetson and Stetson's history, but that only stems back to the first in 1974 and really not any
larger mass of them coming through beyond a trickle for the first 10 to 12 years. Then we started getting more. And so somebody would say, well, today, you know, there's plenty of black students who can attend Stetson and do attend Stetson. But on the other hand, I just taught a class this semester in property and I had 91 students and I had one black male and one black female. So
That's not out of the ordinary for them. they want a sense of feeling like they are assured that they're getting the same type of treatment as the majority students do. There's only 5 % of attorneys in the country are African or African descent. it's quite a
Speaker 1 (24:20.782)
a small smattering of them throughout the country. So when they come here, they don't come here from a long history, generally of family exposure and attorneys and the family and things of that nature. If anything, a lot of them might have more negative stories about their interaction with the law than positive. So.
They just need to have the comfort and mentoring connections that are facilitated more organically if you're a majority student just because of your socialization than if you're a non-majority student. I just know from practicing a long time and teaching a long time that
there's clearly more women than men going to law school as of late. And our campus is certainly has more females than males, students. And it's starting to be like that as far as male, female, know, professors and deans across the country.
where it's not 50%, it's close to 50%. So all of that being said, it's for those who've been at it a long time, that's extraordinary gains as far as females are concerned because saying that you needed a lawyer used to be associated pretty much 100 % with you need an older white male. And now, know, every
demographic as representatives. So that's a good thing. We do see more minorities generally from all across the board coming to law school. But as I said, when it comes down to the actual stats that the ADA keeps, all of the minorities are still in the single digits compared to the majority of lawyers being Caucasians.
Speaker 2 (26:40.984)
What do you think are the advantages to a client having representation that looks like?
Well, I think it's more that the advantages is that the attorney may have shared a lot of their socialization. They may have shared experiences, thoughts about the circumstances that the client is facing. You know, it's not something that
there's an argument over whether they can really understand and have the empathy, the sympathy, know how to analyze it in the same fashion as somebody who has come from that similar or same background. So those are the advantages. I mean, you can't guarantee that the person looking like you will necessarily have the same background, but the closer you can get to that.
that certainly helps apply.
Why does a lawyer decide to go into teaching as opposed to staying in whatever practice they're in?
Speaker 1 (27:59.384)
Now, most of them will say that, you know, practice doesn't allow them to.
apply the deeper tenants of the law. You get into practice and you're doing things from certainly client oriented perspective to help the client. But if you're in the civil, a lot of that's going to be generated by trying to recover certain amounts of money, lot of business law there.
Some of it will be personal cases over time. That's what most people do, help individuals one-on-one. Whereas most law professors think about being able to work with students and therefore send out students with a sort of ideology that can help more people on a broader basis.
There'll be academics who write about areas that they can study with great detail and get out there and advocate, you know, on panels and maybe influence legislation. So it's basically the ability to really sit down, think about the law on a deeper level.
In practice, you have to think about it on a practical level pretty much only because the realities are you're paid by the minute to accomplish results. Whereas when you are teaching a teaching law, you know, you're much more on a deeper level with analyzing what the law is all about. And I wouldn't say high theory.
Speaker 1 (30:04.782)
But some do say hi, Gary. We try and blend, find that maximum point of practice and theory when we're teaching our students. But of course, again, like all academics, we want to individually go out and influence whether it's the local community, the legal community, or the world.
as a whole, the nation and the world in some fashion. And you don't think you can do that when you've got clients and you're talking to clients minute by minute on a daily basis to achieve one particular thing.
In our last episode, spoke with a couple of alumni and they said that when a Stetson graduate crosses the bar and is about to actually speak before a judge, you can tell that that was a Stetson student. What does that mean?
Well, I would gather that they're saying that they're prepared and present on the behalf of their client in a different fashion than the average lawyer that they hear out there. The average lawyer is often unprepared and hasn't really thought the matter through as well as I think.
we prepare our students to. So there's a bit of decorum that we instill in our students, you know, as far as how to approach both their adversaries and the fact-finders, whether it be a panel in the arbitration setting or a special magistrate or something that's been appointed to try and help people mediate a
Speaker 1 (32:07.666)
settlement of some type. But I think that's what they're talking about. mean, I don't know if you followed up and asked them what it meant. But certainly, that's what I've heard as well. And that's, that's the way I've heard them describe it, just the presentation from a practical sense and both the depth of understanding and analysis that they put forward for the particular client.
They highlighted many of the same things you said. One thing they spoke about was decorum and professionalism. And they talked about, like you said, interacting with adversaries. They also talked a lot about being able to interact with the judge comfortably and professionally. So that was a big part of it as well as they said, don't look at the defense, look at the judge. And we learned that as Ted said.
Yeah, and you know, we help people learn that because we have so many judges that help prepare the students, know, actual judges, actual arbitrators, mediators and so forth. They come and help teach classes here and then we send students out there. I just talked with a faculty member who was looking for approval for program.
for students because some judge reached out to her saying that we think Stetson would be good. And it's a judge who either, I think this judge is a Stetson alumni from way back, but he said, you know, these getting too many attorneys coming to our courtroom, we don't know this area of the law. Can Stetson help us some kind of way with both students in my courtroom and Stetson putting on programs to
help educate these attorneys. So yeah, you come through here with a much greater comfort level than probably the average student.
Speaker 2 (34:07.694)
Two final questions for you. First one is what is a case from early in your career that you remember that was formative or important to who you became as a lawyer?
Let's see, there have been lots of cases. But I guess one of the cases was something that is common now, but wasn't then. And that was the Senate Tenants Bill of Rights in Chicago. So that was an important case. And we had another case when I was working with the same organization.
the set up rights for mobile home tenants because a mobile home part isn't generally looked at in the same fashion as a landlord tenant arrangement in a regular building. the one with the mobile home part, that went all the way to the Supreme Court, even though I wasn't still with the agency.
by the time I got there. But it was interesting from going to court and then having big meetings and so many different constituents involved in both of those instances where you have politicians come in to play and, you know, different, different levels of court for different things to sit down and really hammer out something that in the end, that's still the test of time. So I guess those are the ones that
would matter the most or that are easiest for me to recall.
Speaker 2 (35:56.142)
That work is greatly appreciated. My last question for you before we go, and thank you so much for your time. What makes a good lawyer?
What makes a good lawyer? Well, there are a lot of things that make a good lawyer. think since this last day of class is here, I have to say what I tell all the students is I'm trying to read over their submissions and answer their emails and put together my own exam. The first thing that makes a good lawyer is knowing the law. So.
not only just being able to read it, law libraries are open to the public and people through the Constitution, as I said earlier, have a right to go to court. They can go to court and represent themselves. But a lawyer, a good lawyer, knows the law, knows how to research it, to find out its true applicability, whether it is fitting for the circumstances that they are
evaluating at the time and it's so they know how to analyze it and be persuasive for the good of their client. And then, you know, that's on a substantive basis. Again, we mentioned decorum and professionalism before. You want to have the requisite amount of those qualities and be an empathetic and understanding without
personalizing every single conflict because I mean, you really can't go very far. Every matter is going to be personal to you. You have too many issues that you have to address. Well, know, commitment. You have to be committed to being a good lawyer. So again, that involves knowledge, right? It involves not only knowledge of the substance, but how to act.
Speaker 1 (38:04.984)
from a professional and ethical standpoint and willing to put in the effort that's necessary to accomplish the positive goals.
This has been Real Cases. Thank you for listening. Check back for more episodes about an array of legal topics presented by the Stetson University College of Law. Learn more at stetson.edu.
Topics: Real Cases Podcast
