Athletes and celebrities may be the ones in the spotlight, but behind every sponsorship deal, headline-making trade, or backstage battle over royalties, there's a lawyer making it all happen.
On this episode of Real Cases, we sit down with three Stetson Law alums: music industry attorney and Founding Partner of Keller, Turner, Andrews, & Ghanem, Jason L. Turner; Senior Director and Associate Council for the Charlotte Hornets, Cymoril White; and Vice President of Basketball Strategy for the Utah Jazz, Steven Schwartz. We discuss the ins and outs of copyright termination, new legal questions around data gathering through wearable technology, and the multitude of unusual avenues through which people enter the profession.
Transcript:
Speaker 2 (00:03.692)
When I moved back to Nashville almost instantly I got plucked into two pretty high profile litigation matters of which I ended up at the time as a probably 28, 29, 30 year old being the lead litigator. And, you know, my first thought was, my gosh, you know, I haven't even tried a case yet in the real world.
But I took a moment, took a breath, and just took a step back and said, wait a minute, I've been through this. All of these trial team competitions, I've been through it. I know what to expect. I know how to carry myself in the courtroom. I know the rules of evidence. I know when to object. I know how to question a witness. I certainly know how to cross a witness. All of those things truly gave me the confidence and the peace of mind to walk into that federal courtroom against somebody who'd been doing this for probably 40 plus years and not be swayed by that at all. And I absolutely attribute that a thousand percent to what I learned at Stetson.
Today we sit down with three Stetson law alums. Music industry attorney and founding partner of Keller, Turner, Andrews and Ghanem, Jason L. Turner, class of 2004. Senior director and associate counsel for the Charlotte Hornets, Cymoril White, class of 2019. And vice president of basketball strategy for the Utah Jazz, Steven Schwartz, class of 2015. Sports and entertainment law encompasses a wide variety of jobs and legal specializations. And one thread that emerged in our discussion was that there's no single way into it.
We begin with Cymoril White, who explains that it was actually connections she made in law school that led to her current position.
Speaker 1 (02:07.214)
My first job out of Stetson Law when I graduated was at Ford Harrison. They're in a labor and employment boutique firm, national firm. So I solely did labor and employment litigation defense.
If you want to go in-house, tell people get into labor and employment first. You get to learn a lot about when you're working with different HR or different companies. You get to learn a lot about what it takes to be in-house. And it's a very easy transition. I knew, I didn't know initially I wanted to go in-house, but it was always an option that you see a lot of labor and employment lawyers actually get poached from their clients to go in-house. So it's very, very common in that field. So I was considering maybe I'll want to go in-house one day. And what's funny is that where I currently work, the Charlotte Hornets was not one of my clients, but the current GC, she just got promoted into her role and me and her used to play intramural basketball at Stetson Law. We were like, wow. We were one of the only few females. She was a 3L, I was a 1L. We really didn't know each other, but we knew of each other. And we really just knew each other on the court. And when we graduated, we both were in the law league in Tampa and everything. So it was just, we knew each other through sports.
And so that's how she just saw me on LinkedIn - I posted an article and she was like, hey, I have this opening. Do you want to apply? I know you like basketball. And so literally it was just the networking right time, right place. And you will find, especially in sports and entertainment, everybody's like, I want to be a sports lawyer. And it's very hard to break into this industry. It is very, very much a relationship base. Obviously you have to have, you know, the skills and abilities and the education, but it really is knowing the right people and when those positions open, hearing about them, right? So, yeah, so I tell everybody, if you want to be in sports and entertainment, you got to network.
When you were at Stetson, were you focused primarily on employment and labor law? Is that what you thought you were going to go into when you were in law school, or how did that work?
So actually, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, right? I think that when you start law school, you have an idea of what kind of law is out there and then you finally learn it's not about figuring out what you want to do, it's what you don't want to do, right? So I was narrowing down the possibilities and actually it was through Stetson's OCI I interviewed with Ford Harrison for my 2L summer associateship. I actually turned them down with a different firm, ended up hating that firm and I reached back out starting at the beginning of my 3L year to Ford Harrison saying, really enjoyed the interviews and it just so happened that they had another opening and they liked me when they were interviewed. So it just worked out. But yeah, so that's how that happened.
Speaker 2 (05:01.902)
Okay, interesting. you first went to law school, what field did, was there a particular field that you thought you were interested in? I know you said that it's kind of an object, that the name of the game is sort of narrowing it in reverse, figuring out what you don't want to do. But what was it that drew you to law school in the first place?
So before I went to law school, I actually was a high school Spanish teacher. I did teach for America and they placed me in Jacksonville, Florida. So that's how I got to Florida. okay. So I taught for three years and it became apparent to me that looking at the different administration and different policies that were coming down in the department of education, I did not know the rules that governed. And I felt like people who were making these rules that were not applicable for or reasonable for the classroom teachers, they never taught before. And I was like, well, I so initially I wanted to get into go to law schools, I want to know the laws that govern me, I want to make policy, I wanted to do all of that. So that's kind of what drove me to law school, not knowing what that looked like in the legal field, what classes I would take. But then when I got to law school,
I started to realize there's so much more and labor and employment kind of fell in my lap my my three year.
Once I learned about it and I took an employment discrimination class with Professor Bent and I fell in love with it. It was one of my favorite classes. I was like, what is this area of law and how can I get into it? Because labor and employment does not sound sexy when you first hear it, right? So once I took a class, was like, sign me up. You get all the juicy details of the cases that you would get in criminal law, but it's on the civil side.
Speaker 1 (06:41.998)
everybody knows crazy things happen at work. Everybody has a job and there are some crazy people out there. So while I was reading the facts of certain cases, I'm seeing, I can't believe they sent this text message or I can't believe they would do this at work or they would think this is okay. And so it kind of was like a telenovela. You're reading the facts of the cases of employment law and applying, and it's something that every person deals with, right? Unlike criminal, I like to majority of people are not criminals.
But everybody can relate to employment law. Everybody's had a job in some way or fashion. And the drama that comes with that is really what drew me in. So that's why I ended up loving it.
So tell me a little bit about the job that you have now working for the Hornets.
Being in-house, before I even get to the sports entertainment side of being with the Hornets, in-house in general is completely different in a sense of what I used to do. Again, I did a lot of, I was litigation, labor and employment, a lot of pre-litigation work, a lot of drafting, research, writing, which I loved. there's, you know, there's definitely, miss the litigation piece of being an attorney. But now that I'm in-house, I'm kind of a master was a jack of all trades, right? I'm not a master of none. especially at Fort Harrison with her boutique firm, I only did labor and employment. Now that's a lot. That's a huge umbrella, but I only did L &E work. Now, as I'm in-house, I deal with all sorts of areas of law. Some that are very interesting, some I absolutely hate. For instance, the main part of my job is contract law, right? So majority of my...
Speaker 1 (08:22.542)
my position here being in-house and any in-house position is you're reviewing contracts, revising, negotiating, writing. You are dealing with pen and paper. Well, not pen and paper, but you get what I'm saying. A lot of transactional stuff. You also deal with lot of labor and employment. Again, that's my bread and butter. You have to deal with HR. have your company that you work for now, you have employees. So you're going to have employee issues. So I am drafting policies, reviewing
helping in internal investigations, doing the handbook, payroll practices. You have to know those laws wherever you're at. Then some of the new things that I'm dealing with now as I'm in-house is, especially for the Hornets, is IP, intellectual property. That is our brand. That is what we're selling. That is the product from the team all the way down to the swag and everything in between. So having to learn about intellectual property law, data privacy is huge.
Especially now with the rise of different technology, AI, of course you have that, but not only with how do we use data and the data privacy laws that we have to abide by, but also with our products, but also in-house, what systems are we using to get our job done day to day? So different vendor agreements, all the marketing laws. So everyone's like, what do you mean? I'm like, marketing covers a lot, depending on what your company does.
you touch on a lot of different things, whether you're dealing with the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. So especially if you're dealing with influencers and social media marketing, you have liquor laws or ABC laws, right? We run our arena. So in dealing with different concessionaires, we have to worry, make sure that we are abiding by and worry about complying with those laws. Different promotion laws. If we're running raffles, to sweepstakes, to SMS marketing, to...
Any type of giveaway that we do, there are laws for that, state laws for that. All the way down to e-commerce. So there's just things I never thought about. And then you have the unsexy stuff, Like corporate governance, insurance. And now I'm learning little bit about construction laws. So we are doing a huge renovation of our arena here at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte. And we are also building a brand new practice facility next door. So that's just things I never thought I would have to deal with.
Speaker 1 (10:45.836)
There's never a dull day.
Yeah, that's fascinating. Do you like that part of the job that you that it intersects with so many different areas of the law? Like, do you find that hard to like keep a keep a handle on all of that? Or do you find find yourself kind of animated by that experience of dealing with all these different fields?
At first, I was really nervous because again, I was kind of a specialist, right? Even in labor and employment, I specialize in certain areas at my firm and I touted that, right? On the tie rodding clients in certain cases and things that I worked on, right? Now I was like, oh, now I'm gonna be doing multiple things and I know nothing about IP or what is a data privacy, what? But now I love it. I love that, know, our, sports and entertainment, depending on the world,
what happens day to day in our society definitely affects our products, our brands, and what we do even at the league level with the NBA. So it kind of made me more aware of what was going on where before and they would implement, I was kind of in my bubble. But now I love it. love that no two days are the same. I love that I'm learning something new every day. It can be challenging and scary sometimes, but it definitely, it's great.
Could you give me any concrete examples of how intellectual property law intersects with what you do? Like some particular examples of things that you've dealt with recently or topics that you've had to keep in mind?
Speaker 1 (12:17.998)
Sure. So one thing, I mean, the biggest moneymaker that we have here with sports is sponsorship or partnership deals, right? So we go out and we have a sponsor that says, hey, we want to be one of your naming sponsors and use the Charlotte Hornets marks in our marketing, right? How much do we have to pay? What does that look like and what type of rights do we have? So we literally, a part of our sponsorship agreements, we are licensing the use of the Charlotte Hornets marks names brand, even creating, know, of our players and things of that nature. We are licensing that out to different companies that we contract with. And that's not something I never thought, I didn't think of using intellectual property in that way, or that's how it worked. I just think of, trademarks, patents, copyright, that's what you get for your class. But so we are, you're licensing the rights to use these marks, our trademarks to different companies. Another thing is, in the reverse, we are paying a music licensing, huge issue, right? Especially in social media and things of that nature, using the new popular songs, we have to pay somebody for a music license to use that song or, or get permission, if we can get it for free, to use it, right? Whether it's in the arena, if it's online and social media, if it's on our website, all of those are different types of use of IP.
So those are just two, some examples I deal with a lot.
That's interesting. Could you tell me a little bit more about the distinction you were making earlier about being a litigator versus working in-house?
Speaker 1 (13:58.338)
Being a litigator and when I was at the firm, you're dealing a lot of what you may take classes on this, especially at Stetson. They have a lot of practical classes, which is why I loved when I went to Stetson. It's not just theory. We drafted interrogatories, we did discovery, we draft pleadings. And that's, I mean, that's what you really do. You're doing all the grunt work as an associate. So there's a lot of the pre-litigation drafting, which is you research the writing,
And definitely going to court, you know, whether you get to make it all the way to trial, if you're going to argue different motions, different things, depositions and what have you. So there's that day to day grind, which I love. But now that you're in house, we hire people to do that. As I say, you go in house, you're more of a project manager. When we, we do a lot of things in house to...
you know, which is more of risk assessments or advising our different departments, whether it be marketing or ticketing or whatever on, you know, what they can and cannot do from a legal sense, right? But if we ever, God forbid, get sued or if we are dealing with, let's say we are served a subpoena, right? If I'm involved with the MBA or anything like that and we have to produce documents, right?
we are now hiring out somebody to handle that. So I used to be, when I was at the firm, the outside counsel, the person that currently would hire to handle a labor and employment dispute, right? Now I get to choose who's gonna handle that for me. And I'm just kind of managing it day to day and kind of updating ownership or whoever in my leadership tree of what advice I'm on, what's going on. So those are the key distinctions.
Do you find that it's slightly less of a public-facing kind of job now that you're working in-house?
Speaker 1 (15:59.854)
Oh, 1000%. When you're at a firm, no matter if it big or small, at a certain point, especially if you want to make partner, you want to be a rainmaker, you have to go out and get clients. So it kind of turns into a sales job. anybody who has sales experience, it's really going to help you go into law school. Something I didn't know when I went in. But you are, you are putting on, when I was at the firm, I was doing different webinars and writing articles and you want your name out there. You are trying to get people or
business to hire you for your expertise. Now that I'm in-house, right, people are, the old me would try to get current me to send her business, right? Now I'm just, I would say I'm not in the public eye at all. I'm more behind the scenes. I'm in the public eye, it's not a good thing. So I'm more behind the scenes. I am helping the business in whatever ways, different types of capacities. So it's definitely.
definitely behind the curtain type of job.
That's interesting too, especially because I think a lot of people when they think about sports and entertainment law, their mind might immediately go toward like thinking about agents or people who are in like these very public facing kinds of kinds of roles.
I get that a lot when they're like, my God, you for the Hornets. So do you work with the players? And I was like, I'm actually the Hornet Sports and Entertainment. I work for the company, right? The players are a part of it, but they have their own agents. They have their own attorneys that represent them. So what's interesting specifically when you come into sports, it's normally a triangle effect, right? So you have the league, whatever, that's the NBA, NFL, whatever, NHL.
Speaker 1 (17:38.702)
Then you have the players and they're, they're all represented by different unions. So you have the players union that represent the players and then you have the players themselves with their agents. So you have this kind of trifecta, right? When you're dealing with any type of matter, right? And so people don't really understand it. They go, work directly with them. I'm like, no, they have their own people and we have a, we have a CBA in place for those who don't know, a collective bargaining agreement with the different unions. So with the NBA and they have like certain rules. So what we can and cannot do. So.
It's not only federal, state, and local law we have to worry about. We also have to look at what is the CPA rules? What are the league rules and what we can certainly do? There's 700 plus page document of the things we can and cannot do and like how the MBA has different rules and things that we have to follow. So it's not just the legal stuff that we have to be familiar with.
Do you have any like particular stories or just things about the where and how you work day to day that you think people would find remarkable?
Since my area was like, oh, what's a normal day look like for you? And I'm like, I don't, they look different every day. It depends on what's on fire. Did we, is there an article, breaking news article with one of the players in the news that, you know, is a fire that we have to handle versus PR and things of that nature? somebody, you know, is there somebody, one of the players in trouble? Is there something breaking with updates on what we're doing with the arena build or the practice facility build?
So they're really, I don't think I have a fun story. But I think what really makes it stand out is that I have never used social media so much for my job than when I came in house. mean, keeping up with what's happening, what's trending, looking at comments on certain posts, when things come out, different articles come out. I am heavily involved on.
Speaker 1 (19:36.718)
and looking at social media now, which I think makes this job a lot more fun, right? I feel more connected. But yeah, I think that's like a standout thing that you'll find with sports and entertainment.
So what do you think are some of biggest issues or challenges right now in sports law or sports and entertainment law if you want to cast the net a little wider?
So there's different issues depending on the level, right? You have the professional level, the collegiate level. I think they all have their different issues that they're focusing on. Professionally, I don't know if there's a certain issue at the forefront, but definitely the rapid changing digital space, whether it be marketing, protecting, different ways to protect, or people are nefariously using intellectual property or interacting with content.
social media platforms and otherwise, that is definitely, since it's ever changing and everybody knows that the law is reactive and it is a very slow reaction. So it makes my job a little bit harder when I'm trying to advise my client, which is the company, whether in the different departments on how to correctly interact or use this budding technology because there's no laws out there necessarily that govern it. And we can only speculate.
as to how we think the law would apply. So there's a lot of interpretations for those who like that in law school when you're reading and how you're going to apply and honestly get creative in how you are going to respond to the different, I would say client, but my company, how to respond to these stakeholders.
Speaker 1 (21:19.47)
Cause I don't, you don't want to be no, right? In-house you don't want to be the bad guy. A lot of people look when you work for a business, we are a red line item, right? We're not a money revenue section in the company. We are always going to be costing money and but saving overall. So we don't become the bad guy and say no to everything. We're like, okay, how can we get to a yes? That is literally as an in-house.
you know, how can we get to a yes? What is the risk? What are some, you know, creative solutions or things I can present to our presidents and ownership and all of that. So it definitely can be stressful, but fun at the same time, because you literally don't have a playbook, right? You have to come up with that, so.
like that you used the sports metaphor there too also about having a playbook. That's fascinating though, because I think that, and maybe this is part of just the process of going to law school and learning about.
I try.
Speaker 2 (22:17.804)
the current state of the law as it is, or depending on what field you go into. But I think a lot of people associate the law and being a lawyer with just like understanding the rules in every situation. And so I think it's fascinating what you were saying. In a way, it might be a little bit more academic than people would expect that you find yourself in these situations where it's like, well, this is all new enough that there isn't really a lot of case law about it.
So all I can tell you is just that based upon these following principles, when it comes to how the law works with regards to this topic, my advice is X, Y, and Z. Here's what you should do. Here's how to keep yourself safe legally. Here are best practices. I think that kind of interpretive work as part of your day-to-day job might be something that a lot of people probably wouldn't think about initially.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. that can be scary for some people. But I tell people, you need to know just enough.
to be dangerous and you need to, know just enough of insurance, which I absolutely hate, that I know when I need to call my art outside counselor. The great thing about being in house that I don't have to be the expert. I'm hiring somebody to be the expert or to double check my work if I ever feel a certain way about a certain topic. But it definitely allows you to get creative and be involved with more than just.
the legal side of things, right? I'm involved with marketing. How can we could be creative and use, you know, a certain person to come do a voiceover for us, right? How can we get this contract to an agreeable, you know, terms so we can use this cool new drone? I don't know, right? They didn't come with some crazy ideas. And so I get to be a part of those think tanks, which is really exciting.
Speaker 2 (24:09.134)
Are there any new topics that you see kind of coming up on the horizon in terms of sports law, things that you think are coming down the pike?
In sport, I mean the use of AI, mean like just like anywhere, it actually is very, very big in the sports industry. What people don't realize is that like a lot of technology that these athletes and teams use to
to evaluate the athletes is mind blowing from wearable technology, just like you can kind of think of the avatar and those crazy suits, you know, behind the scenes suits that they wore to track all those movements. There's crazy technology out there that you now see being implemented in sports and a lot of, there's a lot of AI technology. So coming down the pipeline, I would think for us from on the league level and the team levels, it's just.
how we are going to allow that to be integrated, what are the safeguards, right, with data privacy? What are the best uses of this AI? How will it enhance the game or otherwise hurt the game? So I think just like in every industry, figuring out how to use AI effectively and protect our core assets in the same space is definitely a big thing.
When you talk about wearable technology, is this, are you talking about like sensors that athletes will wear? Are they wearing them like during games? Are they wearing them during practices? Like, can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 1 (25:34.542)
I mean, there's, so there's, I would definitely say like, I wish I understood more about technology. I'm actually, feel like every time I talk to my business intelligence team, like they're, I feel like a five-year-old, cause I don't know what they're talking about. I'm like, explain it to me again. But there's all types of technology. So there's definitely things that they call wearables out there. So you'll see different athletes, even commercials they wear and there's different like sensors.
that can track muscle movement, track the internal what's going on with their body, heart rate, all of this to try to maximize performance or to gauge performance, anyway from how they're shooting and their shot technique, how does it look compared to others? mean, there's literally some really advanced technology out there and different vendors that are pushing some of this technology.
that I feel like a lot of teams are starting to look into, the league starting to look into. We are using some form of Nellow for certain vendors that have been gone through in a process with the league been improved, but there's so much more that's coming out now with AI that it's very exciting to see what they're gonna do. But I mean, you can literally, there's technology out there when you're wearing a whole suit and they're tracking every, like literally every single thing that you're doing when you're at practice.
Not so much, not during the games, I don't believe right now, but definitely during practices and things of that nature, different workouts so they can gather that data. And when you see the trade deadline just happen, there's you know, different things that are shared between the teams as far as like what each player is able to do, what their scores look like. People are used to just like, a basic physical, right? They look good, their knees good, whatever, but now it's getting more more technic.
technologically based. So it's gonna be interesting to see what they're gonna allow in the future.
Speaker 2 (27:28.672)
So switching gears, let's talk about what led you to Setsun for law school.
So I was what they call a non-traditional student. after I graduated undergrad at Iowa, I worked for four years, three as a teacher, one doing outside sales. So I didn't start at law school until I was 26. So I was definitely one of the biggest thing is that I really wasn't trying to be a part of the undergrad lifestyle anymore. I got a great four years. I was not trying to be around 18 year olds again.
I really wanted to lock in and not have all those other distractions. So one that sets in law is its own campus. It's not attached to the undergrad. The campus was beautiful. So if you're gonna be stuck anywhere, you're gonna wanna be in a place that is comfortable. So between the amenities, the pool right by the beach, just how it's, I lived in the Rosa apartments with a couple of blocks away from the campus. I literally lived there and it was just,
my own little oasis, was another big plus for me when I was touring schools. After being in the work, you know, working and being in the workforce, I wanted to go to school, not just for a whatever name or program, but I wanted the skills. I wanted to come out of it. Like I knew like the degree is only going to get you so far, right? Like that's nice. But like I want the actual skills when I graduate. And so since at the time we were number one in trial advocacy, I think number two or three in legal writing.
And for me, I was looking at lot of the classes that they offer with the practical skills classes that I kind of alluded to before. When I graduated, I knew what what interoperatories were. I knew how to draft leadings. knew, which would really help me as a first year associate. These are the skills that, you know, I think are, aren't pushed really in other law schools, but Stetson was really like, we will get you the skills to start immediately. And that's what I was looking for.
Speaker 2 (29:23.776)
Our next discussion is with Steven Schwartz, Vice President of Basketball Strategy for the Utah Jazz. He explains that for him, attending law school was one step in a larger strategy to break into working at the NBA, a job he'd wanted all his life.
I have always wanted to work in the NBA since I was a little kid, you since I was about 12 years old, I knew I wanted to work in the NBA. So literally everything I've done in my life from all the way from when I was 12 through law school has been to further pursue that goal. So when I was in college, I worked for the Austin Toros, which is the minor league team for the San Antonio Spurs.
I went to the university of Texas. Their minor league team is based in Austin. They're now called Austin Spurs, but I was very fortunate. My sophomore, junior and senior year, I worked with them and I was also extremely fortunate and lucky that I worked with some very, very good people. Quinn Snyder, who would later go on and become the head coach of the Utah Jazz was the head coach. My first season there, assistant coach for three seasons while I was there, Taylor Jenkins.
is actually also now currently the head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies. And there was a bunch of other people that I was just, again, very, very fortunate to learn from, to work with. So I did that during college. I knew that even though I had this great basketball background, this basketball education, I majored in finance while I was at Texas, but I felt like I was really learning basketball through my internship with the Austin Toros.
I decided that I wanted to go to law school because first, A, that seemed to be the trendy thing at the time. There were some NBA executives rising up who had been lawyers, but in truth, also gaining that skillset would make me a much more unique candidate to have staying power in the NBA. Cause then I would hopefully have this basketball background. And then I would also have this legal background, which would be a very powerful combo. So I actually still remember
Speaker 3 (31:33.07)
I guess I'm, you know, diverging a little bit, but, I still remember at the, law school fair at the university of Texas. still remember meeting Darren Kettles, who I think is still at Stetson. So I actually ran into him and Darren was my first contact with Stetson when I met him at that law school fair. So we can circle back to that. I'm sure a little bit later.
Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:02.52)
But then I ended up going to law school at Stetson, which was excellent for me. And while I was there during the summer, typical 1Ls, you know, go on to work for a law firm. I was basically working with the Orlando Magic coaching staff because that's where all my connections were. So I was doing something quite different. And then my 2L and 3L summers, I worked with the Utah Jazz in their front office and got
learn and do all kinds of, you know, just fun stuff for me at the time, just being exposed to the high level MBA, you know, work. And then I thought I was going to get on full time with the jazz. I actually, so I did it my two summer and then my three summer. So after I graduated, I drove back to Utah from Florida. And then when most people are studying for the bar exam, I was like, this is my best chance to make the MBA.
So was like, I'm going to cram for the bar exam, hopefully get a job and then, you know, and then take, take the bar and then start back in Utah full time after that. So I worked all the way to July one. I talked with the GM at the time and said, Hey, Steven, you did a really good job, but unfortunately we don't have a job for you right now. So I had to drive back from Utah, Texas, where I took, took the bar exam. And then I crammed for the bar exam in four weeks, knowing that I just been sort of crushed.
in terms of my dream. So I take the bar exam at the end of July, I interview with the Cleveland Cavaliers. They ended up calling me up and saying, Hey, Steven, you finished a close second. So then I am sitting in my parents' house having a mini existential crisis of, okay, did all this work. What am I going to do? And fortunately, Quinn Snyder, who is now the head coach of the jazz at the time,
was looking for an assistant who knew basketball. So I was like, well, as a, as a new lawyer, that wasn't exactly, you know, what you necessarily want to go to be doing right away. But I also knew that in the way the NBA works is you just want to get your foot in the door and then hopefully it happens. So I decided to do that. So Quinn hired me as his assistant. I worked that whole year. You know, I was traveling with the team.
Speaker 3 (34:26.827)
I was on the core working with the coaching staff, just doing a lot of stuff that I had normally done. And then, but the front office still, I worked with them closely the past two summers. So they were giving me work on the side as well. And then one of our, or our assistant GM left, go to another team. And then I was the one who knew the collective bargaining agreement the best, which is a six, 700 page legal document that basically outlines all the rules of the MBA of what you are.
allowed to do or not when it comes to team building contracts, all that kind of stuff. And since he left, so that was 10 months into me working nine months into me working. I've been in charge of what is called sort of like the salary cap for the Utah Jazz. So that's sort of my story. And then I ended up working another year for Quinn while also being in charge of the salary cap. And then I got hired on full time to the front office after that.
Wow, I'm curious to know in, I'm working in basketball. How unique is your story do you find?
Everybody's story ends up being pretty unique because there's not this traditional process of, hey, I go to ex law school, I graduate in the top 5 % of my class, I go through OCI, I do a summer associate, and then I get a job. Like that's just not how it works. There's just not jobs like that. So everybody's story ends up being pretty unique from what I find.
What made you feel so confident at such an early age that you wanted to work in the NBA?
Speaker 3 (36:03.726)
I wasn't overly, I knew that there was going to be a chance that I wasn't going, like it wasn't going to happen. My dad actually loved to make the old joke. Like there's more senators than there are NBA GMs. I'm not sure, I'm not sure why you're doing this, but I figured I would just go after what I really wanted to do while I was still somewhat young and unencumbered. And then if things didn't work out,
I wanted to set myself up with some good education and then I figured I could pivot from there. So I was deeply contemplating all that during my month of existential crisis in August.
bet. Yeah. So, I mean, you started to talk a little bit about it, about why you had this dual strength as an applicant, both having a very rich background in the NBA and knowing basketball, but then also having a law degree. But could you tell me a little bit in like just in general about why it is that you think having a law degree, like what made
what made you stand out as a candidate because of that.
So basically in the NBA, there are three general pathways I'd say to break in. There's scouting, there's analytics, and then there's strategy, which is usually where all the lawyers come up. So I would say what made me stand out is not too many people could like individually come up in multiple pathways successfully. So I think
Speaker 3 (37:44.546)
having my basketball background and working with coaches and understanding the game, I probably could have tried to have broken in the NBA just through scouting, but getting the legal background and there's a ton of people who are lawyers and are just more, they don't have necessarily the basketball background, but they're still able to break in through the strategy way. So again, having both of those items, I think is what made me unique as a candidate in addition to.
I guess I like worked hard and I think in sports as in probably most things in life, if you're able to build up the trust of the higher level people you're working with that goes a long,
Tell me a little bit about the ways in which your JD does like actively factor into what you currently do as VPS strategy.
Going back to my earlier point, the NBA is based off of a 700 page document or so called the collective bargaining agreement. There are not too many collective bargaining agreements anymore. I would say in the world at large in the United States, they've mainly gone away because a collective bargaining agreement is an agreement between, let's say the owners of a business and then the employees.
So in this case, it's the owners of the teams and the players who are the employees. So this giant legal document breaks down all the rules of how they split up revenue. And really what's the most important thing to me is how you're able to transact as a team with trade signings, how much money you're allowed to spend. So that is all based off of a legal document.
Speaker 3 (39:33.89)
you don't necessarily need to be a lawyer to obviously to like read through and like try to understand that, but it's definitely helpful. And I think I understand it at a different level because you, generally know why things are written a certain way or when things are written a certain way and they're ambiguous means, know what, maybe we need to figure out how this is defined better. So I would say the biggest strength is probably a being able to truly understand that agreement. And then there's also,
when it comes to being a lawyer, a big part of being a lawyer is negotiation. negotiation is big when it comes to, again, determining how, when you are conducting negotiations with players on signing their contracts, when it comes to negotiating with other teams on trades. So I would say that general skillset of being a lawyer is very important.
to working in the NBA with what I'm doing, even though when you think of a lawyer's negotiation skills, you don't necessarily think, you know, basketball, like it's very important in basketball as well. And even if those lawyers aren't necessarily going to litigation, right? Having those negotiation skills is very important.
So would you say a lot of what you do is kind of an offshoot of employment law in one way or another?
I think you could say that. When I was at Stetson, I actually really enjoyed antitrust law with Professor Bauer, mainly because that is what the collective bargaining agreements, because collective bargaining agreements would be invalid under antitrust law if they weren't exempted. So like that was a time and a class I paid a lot of attention to knowing the line of work I wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (41:24.928)
Interesting. Yeah, could you tell me a little bit more about like, what were some of the particular classes that you took at Stetson or, you know, specific experiences that you had at Stetson that either stood out for you at the time, or that you feel like really kind of have factored into the work you do now or the way you think of your career?
It's interesting because I know people sometimes point to classes, but I feel like the thing that I remember the most are probably the professors that you felt like did an excellent job and really made you think and were personable and connected with you. And the two that, you know, usually always come to mind for me are professor Varelai and professor Bauer, who I each had multiple classes with. I would say, you know, just their,
way about teaching, I thought was great. Their, you know, their time in investing in their students, I thought went above and beyond. And they also just taught some interesting classes. So I would say that was really important to me. And then the other thing that Stetson provided that I really enjoyed, especially because in the summers, I was doing a lot of basketball work, right? Not necessarily traditional legal work.
So Stetson provided a lot of opportunities for me to do internships for class credit during the year, which I found valuable. that let me actually get some real legal work without detracting from my ability to try to progress in basketball. So I got to do a federal judicial internship with the middle district of Florida, which was extremely interesting getting to see all those cases, working with a federal judge.
seeing how they think, seeing how they go through things. So I think that was an invaluable life experience that Stetson was able to provide. And then they actually also provided an internship at the time with the league office of minor league baseball, was located in Clearwater. And even though I didn't want to work in baseball, getting to see the functions of a league office was really interesting. And actually it just reaffirmed my desire to work with a team just because some of the
Speaker 3 (43:44.13)
things I was doing working for the league office while interesting wasn't the pathway I wanted to go down in life. So that was also a fantastic opportunity as well. So I was very, very thankful to get both of those opportunities during the school year for class credit.
Yeah, yeah. Tell me a little bit about what drew you to Stetson and about that first interaction that you had with Darren Kettles at that fair.
Darren was just extremely personable. I feel like a lot of times people can be overbearing or more salesy at these types of events. And he wasn't at all. And he gave me a lot of information about Stetson. He did a great job of telling me about all the opportunities they provide. And then he really encouraged me to apply. So I ended up applying.
And I ended up getting in and then Darren was my point of contact all the way throughout. I was even very fortunate enough to receive a generous scholarship. And then Stetson actually flew me out to tour me around campus and me the first rate treatment, I guess you could say. And then just getting to see like the beautiful campus.
meeting some of the professors, talking with Darren. It just made me feel that it was going to be a good experience. It felt very personable and small. didn't feel like I was going into this overwhelming machine, like the campus felt close knit. So just getting to see all that in person as well, I think sealed my decision to end up coming to Stetson.
Speaker 2 (45:33.868)
Had you grown up all your life in Texas?
I basically, since the age of three, I'd grown up in Texas. So I had grown up most of my life in Texas to that point.
Did it feel like a big move going from Texas to Florida?
It felt like a big move, but honestly, it was also a warm weather city. Like when I moved to Utah, that felt like a little bit of a different kind of move, mainly because it was a different climate. But in terms of going to like Florida, it just felt like a prettier Texas, right? You have the water surrounding you. that was much nicer.
Yeah. So could you just walk me through like a typical day walk me, you know, cause I think VP of strategy is a very cool and interesting sounding title, but I think it's also one that a lot of people might have some difficulty sort of wrapping their head around, like what it is you do on a day to day basis.
Speaker 3 (46:33.368)
Definitely. So I'm a little bit unique in the sense that there's probably not a typical day. I am literally, I could literally, so we had the trade deadline a few weeks back. So during that time, you were just trying to figure out every possible trade combination or calling up different teams. I'm talking to different teams on the phone, trying to figure out what could be possible. And then you flash forward two weeks later.
past the trade deadline. And you know, now we're turning our attention to the NBA draft. So I'm literally going on a week long scouting trip. So I will be flying all across the East coast, going to five different cities and five, you know, five different nights, seeing a different basketball game every night, trying to identify who could be candidates for all of our draft picks versus, know, there could be some type of
issue that comes up with the league office, right? So then I'm talking with the league office one, one day and you're focused on that issue. Or I could be talking with our coaches about something else like to you. So it's, basically, I could come up with, you could look at me on any single day and it's very much depends on the time of year depends on there's always little fires that, that pop up in any job. I'm
I'm helping to put out whatever fires that may be coming up that day. So I think it's a balance of trying to manage how much I'm going to spend on the things that are important today and tomorrow versus the highest leverage things end up being who you're going to trade for, who you're going to draft. And those things end up manifesting themselves usually at the trade deadline or in the month of June, early July.
but you should always be prepping for that throughout the year to make sure you're prepared to act quickly and decisively when you have to make those choices.
Speaker 2 (48:32.226)
Yeah, yeah. Do you like that part of the job that it's something a little different every day?
Yes, that makes it, don't know. Luckily I haven't been put in the situation where I have to basically be doing the same thing all day every day, but I'm guessing that that's probably not quite my cup of tea. So I really do enjoy it being something different every day, because it just challenges your brains in different ways.
Are there big issues in sports law, specifically as it pertains to the NBA, but also in general, that you kind of see up on the horizon that you think would be fascinating to talk about or interesting or shape the field?
That, adjacently, I am not really responsible for it, but that is fascinating to me. Although I haven't dove deep into it myself is the evolving landscape of college sports. sports is now much different. They talk about it as NIL name image likeness has been able to let athletes get paid to
play sports, football and men's college basketball seem to be the sports that are getting paid a significant amount. We're talking millions of dollars significant, which had been a change to the whole model. There had been, what's called like the house settlement that I'm not very familiar with. So if you ask me a bunch of follow-up questions, I probably will be to answer, but I know they're working through.
Speaker 3 (50:08.888)
trying to figure out how to let the schools pay them directly because in terms of name image likeness, it seems like they had just set up these school funds. It wasn't run by the school more, more the boosters. And again, I am not the expert in this at all, but a lot of it had just been the boosters funding this NIL collective in order for the athletes to get paid. And I think they're trying to look into
a model of where the schools just pay directly. So that is a really fascinating area of sports law currently. know athletic directors over the country, this has a hundred percent of their attention right now in terms of managing this. And what I think it will create is a lot more jobs in college sports. So in the NBA, there's a whole front office usually to manage
roster building and team building and making sure that players are paid appropriately. And college sports as a whole doesn't really have that type of infrastructure as it was just before scholarships are getting, you know, given out by the coaches and that's it. So now if you're going to have to manage how to raise this money, how to pay players, how to sign contracts with these players that involves compensation.
that's going to lead to a lot more jobs and a lot more jobs similar to what pro sports front offices do. So I think that's if you're interested in sports law, if you're interested in working in sports, it's primarily been more pro sports. I think in college sports, there is a ton of opportunity coming if it's not already there.
Turning from sports to the music industry, we speak with founding partner of Keller, Turner, Andrews and Ghanem, Jason Turner. A musician himself who got a music business degree in college, Jason had his eyes set on working for a recording label for years. Yet when he first came to law school, he remained open to the different directions he could go with his legal education. think one of the best pieces of advice I got going into law school was don't go into law school focusing on anything in particular.
Speaker 2 (52:31.33)
That's one of the worst things that any law student can do. And I know that there's law schools out there who profess to be, focus on this or we focus on that as far as a very narrow specific area. The advice I got was get as much of a broad-based education as you can for a couple of reasons. One, when you get out of school, you have no clue what your first job's going to be.
and you wanna make yourself as marketable as possible. But two, if you're really taking the right classes, you're gathering the knowledge and the skills that you're going to use irrespective of what area of law you end up practicing in. So that was kind of the first thing. The second way I would answer that is, yes, I obviously, as I got later into my law school career, I was making sure I was taking
whatever courses would apply to what I eventually desired to do. So I did take copyright and trademarks, which is a pretty intense, I think it's a third year course. At the time there was somebody teaching a version of entertainment law. I taught it funny enough years later for about eight or nine years. a distance education course since I'm
obviously up here in Nashville. But again, you know, for what I do, and I'm sure we'll get into this a little bit, but for what I do every day, you can't really learn the, what I'll call the in the weeds stuff in law school. What you learn is you learn how to deal with clients. You learn how to advocate for clients, how to interview them, how to negotiate, contract, just basics.
That's really what the focus was for me and what I still today, 24 years after being in law school, still advocate when I'm talking to students. Could you tell me about, so you knew early on that you wanted to go into the music business in one capacity or another and you yourself are a musician. Could you tell me a little bit about how you made the decision?
Speaker 2 (54:54.222)
as an undergraduate that you wanted to go to law school, that that was the particular path to pursue? Yeah. Another one of those, what I'll call early life lessons. was working at one of the major record labels and it was during a time where there was a huge corporate merger going on. And so I was sitting there as a 19, 20, 21 year old kid watching
people who had worked, given their heart and soul to this company for years, some decades, literally walking out with the box. Somebody 2000 miles away in California suddenly decided we're going to clean house and start with different people without any indication of job performance or institutional knowledge or anything like that. So that was the first lesson where
As I was sitting there, truly watching this happen to these people, I kind of had this voice in my head saying, I don't know that I want my future being dictated by somebody 2000 miles away who doesn't even know me, right? So that was kind of the first light bulb that went off as I really was kind of forced to think about, if what I'm doing right now specifically is not...
how I want to spend the next 30 years of my life. How can I still work in the music industry, but have a lot more control over my future? I kept going back to, know, the job I'm referring to was working at a record label. And I kept going back to every time I would be with one of our artists, mostly in private. So, you know, maybe we were driving to and from an event together or...
we were out at a show together and talking. Without fail, they would always have something that was going on in their career that they were very upset about. It could be, I'm stuck in an artist management agreement with a manager, I can't stand and the manager's not doing anything, but I can't get out. Or I've been signed to this record label for eight years and they've yet to put out a record on me. It was things like that.
Speaker 2 (57:18.402)
where I would hear these stories directly from these artists. And the thought that was in my head was these all feel and sound like somewhat predictable circumstances. Why wasn't there somebody on your behalf thinking about this, thinking ahead and taking care of that through your contracts? And so truly, I say it was a random, maybe it was divine intervention. I don't know.
that really truly a random thought that entered my head of, I will say it's probably the early days of what some of my friends refer to as the Superman complex that I've been accused of having. Early days of me saying, I can fix that. Like I can think forward and think about these things and I can be that guy that can protect you from these things happening. And the way to do that was to become a lawyer.
And that was truly very late in my last year of college is when I had that thought and I immediately jumped into, okay, well, what in the world do I have to do to even get into law school? And then where do I go? And so that was really the journey of how I got to law school, if you will. Same with the negotiation team.
I tell students that it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I'm really not. Virtually every email I send is some form of negotiation in my practice because I'm working on deals with the other side. So whether it's talking about deal points or if I'm having a phone call, virtually everything we do, one is advocating for our clients, but two, there's some form of negotiation that's going into that.
It may even be negotiating what your fee is for a particular project for a client. So again, those two experiences, I cannot put a price tag on that. And especially being at the school that for so many years has been ranked by other law schools as the number one law school in the nation for those particular things.
Speaker 2 (59:44.714)
Again, it's like the MasterCard commercial. It's priceless. You can't not put a price tag on it. Yeah, could you tell me about some of those high profile cases that you were involved in early on as a litigator? Yeah, the very first one, ironically, was right back in Florida. my first job out of law school was in Orlando. I was there for a couple of years and I came back to Nashville.
And almost immediately, one of our law firm clients, the Backstreet Boys, were pulled into the Lou Perlman Ponzi scheme case. So Lou Perlman is the guy who put together Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, discovered Britney Spears, and tons of other pop stars. And he was based in Orlando. And over the course of probably 15, 20 years,
had effectively created at the time, what was the largest Ponzi scheme in American history. So predated Bernie Madoff up in New York with his investment firm. So I got involved on behalf of not just some of the Backstreet Boys, but their family members and then other artists who had been signed by Lou, who had been caught up in this scheme where the bankruptcy trustee was trying to basically take back money
that Lou had paid to them over all of these years. So again, I did not go to law school to be a bankruptcy lawyer, but guess what? I had to learn up pretty quick. And so that was a long, frankly, the bankruptcy estate is still open even all these years later. And that was, think they finally,
They arrested him around 2007 maybe. And so, but at that point, you know, the FBI had already raided the offices, the bankruptcy had already been started. So that was a very high profile case because there were a lot of retirees, especially in the Tampa, St. Pete, Orlando area who had invested money in the scheme thinking that it was a legitimate investment.
Speaker 2 (01:02:07.498)
And he was effectively using Backstreet Boys, Nsync, all of these major international pop acts as almost like justification for these people to trust him and invest money with him. And all he was doing was using other people's money to, that's what the Ponzi scheme is. Yeah, yeah, just shifting it around. Yeah. that's as long as it grows, no one will, yeah. While that was going on, the next one that I...
kind of got dropped right into was if anybody ever saw the movie Brother Where Art Thou with George Clooney, one of the big songs in that is the old gospel song called I'll Fly Away. we represented five of the six children of the guy who wrote I'll Fly Away back in the 1930s.
This revolved around copyright recapture. Sometimes it's referred to termination of copyrights. It's basically the ability of a songwriter or the songwriter's heirs to get back rights that were granted away, you know, 30, 40 years ago. And the dynamic here was even more interesting because when I say we represented five of the six heirs,
the sixth one was on the other side. wow. OK. So not only was this a copyright case, it was a very intense family dynamic. And again, federal court, because it's the copyright law. And we went through two jury trials, an appeal, actually, I think two appeals to the Sixth Circuit. And we won every step of the way.
And so, you again, I felt very comfortable going in knowing it was a jury trial because I am comfortable talking with people. And, you know, one of the things that they'll teach you in law school is you got to get the jury to like you. And so you had me, the young, fresh faced, you know, 30 year old kid, if you will, in there against a 65,
Speaker 2 (01:04:30.336)
some year old veteran from New York coming into middle Tennessee federal court talking to residents of middle Tennessee, many of whom are not city folk. And so, you know, I knew who my audience was. The New York lawyer definitely didn't. And that showed very early on. But beyond that, you know, we obviously had the facts on our side and it was about
getting those facts out as they apply to the Copyright Act. And ultimately that case, know, people can go find it online. But at the time there were not a lot of termination cases that had been fully litigated in the U.S. There's been many, many years worth that have been litigated with respect to Superman and original creators of Superman. There was a big one about Winnie the Pooh.
There was one about the Ray Charles estate and all of the songs that Ray had written over the years. And again, that became a family fight, if you will, as far as his children go. So at the time, we were one of the very few that had been litigated all the way up to the court of appeals. And so it really kind of set some framework that hadn't been there before as far as what's in bounds and what's out of bounds.
Could you tell me a little bit more about how that works? Recapture, is that the term that you used? Copyright recapture? Because when I think about copyrights, when I saw copyright termination in the description of the case, I always think about things like Mickey Mouse, right? Like when does the copyright run out? I've never really thought about situations where, someone took over the copyright for this because they were given the rights or it was sold to them or however that goes down. And then 30, 40 years later,
someone else has a claim to it and how, so I'm curious to hear a little bit more about how that works. You can talk about either the details of this particular case or just other cases involving it or. Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, I'll use probably one of the simplest examples. So if you're a songwriter, most songwriters will go and they'll sign a publishing agreement with a music publisher. And as part of that agreement,
Speaker 2 (01:06:53.964)
that songwriter is assigning over either part or all of the publishing rights in whatever songs they write during the term of that deal. The idea that Congress had when they passed this law 40 plus years ago was generally speaking, again, when a songwriter enters into those types of deals, they're not necessarily...
at the level of having the bargaining power that they might have down the road, right? Also, nobody knows because nobody has a crystal ball that works that I'm aware of. If so, I need one. Nobody knows that a song that a songwriter writes is going to end up being, you know, I want it that way by Backstreet Boys until it becomes, I want it that way, right?
So the value of that copyright, which starts at zero, can end up being millions of dollars. And so the whole idea of the recapture clause in the Copyright Act is after that publisher has had 35 years to effectively enjoy the benefit of the bargain that they entered into with that songwriter, the songwriter has the ability by following some very, very strict
timeline specific steps of getting back the US rights. This doesn't apply, unfortunately, to worldwide. can get back the US rights in the publishing that they granted to the music publisher back in the day. again, because this law only went into effect with the Copyright Act of 76, that would have been effective then in 78.
a lot of these termination rights issues really didn't start arising until the late 90s, early 2000s, which was around the time my case happened. And that's because that's the first instance, you know, you got to count out 35 years, right? From when the law went into effect, that's when all of this started happening. So it's a great thing for creators.
Speaker 2 (01:09:16.396)
because in the instance of Superman, just think of the Siegel family getting the rights back to that. Usually what happens is when a creator issues the termination notice, I would say at least three quarters of the time, and I'm making that number up, but a pretty substantial part of the time.
that creator or the heirs, if the creator's not still living, they'll sit down and they'll strike a new deal with that party, for that party will then acquire the rights going forward. So that's usually, it can be a big payout. If you're talking about a body of work that is now worth millions and millions of dollars, quite frankly, heirs may prefer to have the money.
as opposed to the ongoing rights that are now broken up as between US and worldwide. Yeah, yeah. OK, fascinating. Yeah, that's one of the more complex things that we deal with just from the standpoint of the way the law is written. Quite frankly, we keep hoping that Congress will make it a little easier on songwriters and the heirs because
If you just miss one by one day, if you're one day late, you lose it forever. you know, that's, it's just attention to detail and getting information, information gathering from your client is crucial in that situation. Yeah. What are some of the big issues with technology in the recording business you see coming up on the horizon? I'll say this.
I will never forget in 1998, again, as a, a teenager, sitting in the boardroom at Warner Brothers Records here in Nashville, where I was working. And they were literally everybody, all the department heads were in there and I was just kind of sitting in the back and they were talking about this new thing called an MP3, digital download. And
Speaker 2 (01:11:34.754)
I will never forget the sales guy in so many words saying, we don't need to worry about that. People are always going to buy CDs, basically move on. And I remember somewhat, you know, kind of sheepishly raising my hand in the back. And one of the execs called on me and I said, Hey, offense to anybody in here, but
I kind of want to make sure you understand what this MP3 thing is. And they're like, what are you talking about? I said, I can drive up the street to my apartment at Belmont and log onto my computer and I can download any song I want for free. And I said, now I may, this was back in the day, remember, I may have to download five or six versions to get like a really great quality version, but it's still at my fingertips. And so I said,
I'm just going to suggest you might not want to dismiss this because we're already doing this as college students. We are the future consumer for you and CDs may not be around forever. Cassette tapes weren't around forever. Now, of course, vinyls come back huge, which I personally love. I say that only to say the music industry as a whole has learned the very, very hard lesson of how they
immediately dismissed and not just dismissed, remember they sued Napster and instead of figuring out how to partner with them and bring them into the fold and make it a mutually beneficial relationship, they tried to sue them out of business and it bit them in the butt big time. They're not doing that this time around with AI. AI is, it can be useful, it can be a beneficial tool.
but it can also be very dangerous. And so while there are a handful of lawsuits right now, the vast majority of the major record labels and music publishers are already working on a variety of different agreements, licensing agreements with the major AI entities to license the use of their music in very narrow, certain particular ways. And so,
Speaker 2 (01:13:58.382)
It still remains to be seen what's going to happen with that, but AI without a shadow of a doubt, as much as I would love for it to go away, it's here. And thankfully, our leaders in the industry have learned that lesson from almost 30 years ago. And instead of just trying to sue it out of business and wishing that it would go away, they've said, no, now there are certain circumstances we are going to sue to enforce our rights.
But there's other instances where we're going to say, no, let's partner together. That voice you just heard is my dog JD, by the way. Named after my law degree. So what drew you to Stetson for law school? I grew up in a very small town. When I went to Belmont, Belmont was relatively speaking a small school. And by small, even like classroom sizes, maybe 30 people tops.
A lot of my classes had 15, 20 people. And so it was really important for me to find a school that still had that same atmosphere. I grew up in a town of 2000 people. So again, when I was in class, I think there were total 60 kids in my graduating class. wow. That was all I ever knew. And I kind of jokingly said, if I'm going to pay to go to law school, because it's not cheap,
to go anywhere for law school. But if I'm gonna pay to go to law school, I kind of want two things. I want small classes so I at least have a chance to have a one-on-one relationship with my professors so they know me. I'm not just a random kid sitting up in the classroom. And two, wouldn't it be bad to go to a school in a place where it's beautiful and the weather's great? And, you know.
driving on campus for the first time and seeing it just blew me away. And then as I sat in on a class and then talked with a couple of professors, I could immediately tell there was something very unique about Stetson. And that they're very much, I call it the Stetson family. It's a very family oriented culture from the standpoint of
Speaker 2 (01:16:23.18)
we all take care of each other. And I can say, know, 24 years after first setting foot in a classroom as a student there, I still today have very close relationships with several of my professors, coaches, mentors, and those relationships mean everything. And I don't know that, I'm sure you get that to some aspect or to some extent,
at other schools. But I continue to believe that's one of the big things that really sets Stetson apart. Law school is hard enough as it is, but when you have that support around you, it makes it a bit easier. And then also knowing that you're going to one of the best schools in the nation, again, not just for advocacy, but for legal writing, those are two things you're doing every day as a lawyer.
I have a deep love for Stetson. I would not be the lawyer that I am today, but for having gone to Stetson. So I think I'll leave you on that note. Great. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thank you for being here. 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
