Paul Greene, founder of Global Sports Advocates, has been selected as a noted practitioner of sports law in a national ranking conducted by Chambers USA.
The recognition places Greene among the top 50 sports lawyers in the nation.
Greene, whose firm is based in Portland, Maine, specializes in protecting the rights of amateur and professional athletes, including several Olympic athletes from the U.S. and abroad. In 2014, Greene won a historic decision for athletes’ rights by successfully challenging sanctions imposed on Jamaican gold medalists Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson. Also last year, Greene orchestrated what is believed to be the first transfer in women’s pro soccer history, on behalf of Canadian star Desiree Scott. Greene has a superb record in representing clients before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the “Supreme Court for Sport” in Switzerland.
Greene told Sports Litigation Alert that it is that “international nature” of his practice that makes his work exciting.
“On one recent day, I Skyped with a lawyer in Botswana about a possible case, did a conference call that featured a Mandarin translator with a lawyer in China on another case, Skyped with a colleague in Australia and filed a brief in a case before the Sports Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada,” he said. “I have been all across the U.S. and traveled to Barbados, Canada, England, Jamaica, Spain and Switzerland for work in the past year and am heading to Mexico later this month.”
Greene, a native of Long Island, N.Y. who lives in Falmouth, not only maintains a broad territory but provides a wide spectrum of services. His Global Sports Advocates focuses on cases involving endorsement contracts and salary negotiations, arbitration hearings, anti-doping proceedings, Olympic eligibility disputes, intellectual property disputes, violations of Title IX, sports injuries and sports industry product liability.
But what really drives him is protecting the rights of athletes, many of which have nowhere else to turn.
“I am so passionate about protecting the rights of athletes because I feel like my work is important and appreciated by my clients,” he said. “In each case I am involved with, the stakes are high for those who hire me. When I am able to stand up and protect their rights it is a great feeling. As one recent example. I successfully represented a young man from Jamaica named Michael O’Hara who had been wrongly declared ineligible for the Penn Relays. In just a few days’ time, I was able to assemble a team, file for an injunction in Philadelphia and prevail so that Michael could compete. He went out and ran historically fast times at the Penn Relays.”
The aforementioned Powell suggested that the athletes know they have a protector of their rights in Greene.
“In what was a most trying time for me, Paul Greene managed to make dealing with it far more bearable,” said Powell, an Olympic Gold Medalist and Former 100M World Record Holder. “He took on this case as if it were the only case he had to mitigate at the time. His sheer expertise, knowledge of sports law, and commitment to winning is unmatched.
“There was never an obstacle that he didn’t find a way to tackle and never a moment he made me feel like he wasn’t beyond committed to the case. Because of him I was vindicated and along the way he stopped just being my lawyer and I now consider him a friend.”
