Thirty years ago, Eric Hagen was playing in the middie line of the Pepperdine University Lacrosse team next to his buddy and Sigma Epsilon brother Anthony Precourt. He had no idea what he was going to do for a living, or whether he would work with Precourt one day.
So, he put his head down and let fate dictate his career path, as a sports lawyer.
Three decades later, Hagen and Precourt remain close friends, and they do work together –
Precourt as the owner of the Austin FC MLS franchise, and Hagen as his Chief Legal Officer.
Every path to being the top legal office of a professional sports team is no different, and Hagen’s story, which he shares below, is no different.
Question: How long have you lived in Austin?
Answer: We moved to Austin in June of 2019 from Los Angeles. I was at DLA Piper at the time and was dual-officed in LA and in Austin. I was doing a fair amount of work for the club before I was hired as the club’s first general counsel.
Q: When did you know you wanted to be a lawyer and specifically a sports lawyer?
A: My interest in becoming a lawyer came late, but my interest in sports started early. I grew up in a small town in Iowa and was part of a family of athletes and sporting enthusiasts. Even though Minneapolis was a long drive, we had season tickets to the Minnesota Vikings since 1963, and we would take long car trips and go see the Vikings play. Metropolitan Stadium seemed like such an amazing stadium back then, even in the cold winters.
Then I went off to college at Pepperdine, which is where I first met Anthony Precourt, who is the owner of Austin FC. Anthony and I were on the same middie line on the Pepperdine lacrosse team. We also both went to grad school at Dartmouth and then just stayed in touch over the years.
Q: What was your graduate school degree in at Dartmouth?
A: I studied environmental chemistry and public policy. I wasn’t there to learn how to be a sports lawyer. But I was flirting with the idea of going to law school. I was still trying to figure out what lawyers do. In the small town I grew up in we had few lawyers – and none in my family – and those lawyers were doing farm leases and wills and other stuff that is far cry from what I do now. But before grad school, I took the LSAT as a placeholder in case I decided to pivot and go to law school.
And I did. I went back to Pepperdine for law school. Perhaps because I was going to law school in the LA area, sports and entertainment and IP were more on my radar. I ended up clerking for a federal judge and then spent time at a handful of firms. I went to Kirkland & Ellis right after my clerkship. I was there for eight years and that’s where I had my first experience working on sports-related cases. I was a litigator, and I worked on cases for DIRECTV, including matters involving media rights for sports programming, as well as an antitrust matter involving NFL Sunday Ticket. I also worked on a defamation case involving the Colorado Rockies.
Q: Did you go to DLA Piper specifically to pursue sports law? Or was that what you gravitated toward when you got there?
A: It was premeditated. I knew that DLA had a strong sports practice and that they represented a number of MLS clubs and teams and leagues in other sports. But they were a big player in the soccer space, which would be advantageous for certain business development plans I was working on. So, I ended up connecting with Frank Ryan, who’s now the global co-chair of DLA Piper. Besides being a leader of the sports practice at the time, he had a similar background as an IP lawyer. We hit it off right away. He was fantastic as a mentor. He introduced me to all the right people, and got me up to speed, enabling me to help Anthony and the other sports clients I was working with.
I was at DLA for a year and a half, and when Austin FC reached out to me about the general counsel job, I took the position, after some deliberation with my family, and we moved here in 2019.
Q: Was it a challenge to work for someone who was already a friend?
A: I’ve had a lot of clients over the years that were good friends, or they became good friends after they were clients. And while I put a lot of pressure on myself with all clients, a close friendship can put added pressure on the attorney-client relationship. But Anthony and I have known each other for over 30 years, so I think there’s also a level of trust that helps the relationship, too.
Q: What do you like most about the job?
A: What I found most attractive is to come here at the ground level when the organization is just starting. When I pulled into town, the proposed stadium site was just an empty dirt lot with a construction trailer. Our training facility was just a field of weeds. Pretty soon I’m driving to work and passing this stadium that is starting to take form. We’re building a roster, a fan base, a brand, and a training facility. It’s really incredible to see what goes into it. And then to have the satisfaction of seeing it come to life with our first match, first on the road and then at home. And then this year we’re currently top of the table. It’s just great to be part of building something and then doing it in a fun environment like this, especially in a great city like Austin.
Q: As a general counsel, there are so many aspects of law that come into play. Has it been easy for you to spread the work around to the outside counsel? Have you found that balance?
A: My workload in terms of hours probably haven’t slowed down much at all from what I was doing as an equity partner at a big firm. From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep as well as nights and weekends, I’m going to be there if something urgent comes up, and inevitably something does come up. Right now, it’s just a department of one, which probably contrasts with the majority of MLS clubs, most of which have more than one in-house lawyer. People are asking me all the time, how are you doing it with just one person? Maybe it’s because I spent all that time at a big law firm that I’m just used to those kinds of hours. It’s kind of ingrained in me at this point. Right?
I’d like to add to the team at some point. In the meantime, I’ve gotten good help from legal interns. I have no shortage of law students looking for internship opportunities. And there’s a lot of things that I can train a young, aspiring lawyer to do, which can help relieve some of my workload.
But I also call on outside counsel when it’s something more substantial like stadium financing or some new area of the law where we want to be extra careful, like sports betting.
Q: Who are you using on the sports betting?
A: DLA. Tim Lowry is the head of their gaming practice. He has been great. I understand he is representing at least two other clubs, maybe more by now.
Q: Is there cross pollination with other GCs at other sports? Have you been able to branch out yet or you focused mostly on the MLS GCs as resources?
A: I’ve definitely had opportunities to meet a lot of GCs in other sports. I knew some coming into this role, and I was happy to get any advice knowing that this was going to be much different than my prior law firm practice. Fortunately, there’s a great collaboration among the GCs in MLS. Every other week, we’re on a call together. It’s an open forum where we can discuss issues that a lot of us are currently facing. And there are things that you’re not yet looking around the corner for, and somebody will raise that issue for you.
The other good thing about having all these different GCs on the phone together is that we all come from different backgrounds. So, my background is in IP. We have others who were practicing data privacy or employment or whatever. So, everyone brings a different expertise and shares that knowledge on our calls. It’s a great resource. It saves time.
There are also several GCs for MLS teams who are working for ownership groups that have more than one sports property. So, you get insights from what those GCs are doing in other leagues, and it’s helpful to know what our counterparts in NHL, NFL, NBA or MLB are doing.
