The circumstances that led to Gregg Clifton joining the Sports Industry Practice Group at Jackson Lewis was a perfect storm in many respects.
Clifton had begun his career as an associate at Jackson Lewis 25 years earlier, so he was familiar with the firm’s philosophy.
A veteran sports agent, Clifton was looking for a new challenge in sports law.
The firm was looking for someone who could maintain an aggressive approach toward building the practice.
And the firm’s decentralized approach to the practice meant that he didn’t have to move from his home base of Phoenix.
But now the work begins. Clifton will be executing on the firm’s growth strategy, with the stated objective of making Jackson Lewis THE overwhelming firm of choice in the professional and college sports universe when it comes to labor and employment law issues.
This could be a daunting challenge in a practice area that is relationship driven. Why would Clifton take a chance at such a challenging prospect?
“First, I started my career with Jackson Lewis, so there was a strong comfort level there,” he told Sports Litigation Alert. “I knew what the firm stood for. After speaking with the members of the firm I was also impressed with their passion for developing and growing their sports law practice. We have assembled a talented group of attorneys in our Collegiate and Professional Sports Industry Practice Group who possess the knowledge and experience to handle all of the legal issues that may arise.”
His career experience as an agent and senior executive with Bob Woolf, Octagon, and most recently, Gaylord Sports Management gave him a unique perspective to, first, see the opportunities from management’s side and, second, to act on them.
“I could see a real need on the management side of the business. The labor and employment issues in collegiate and professional sports have grown considerably in recent years. I felt the need for specialized counsel with substantial sports knowledge was there.
“I’ve thought about this need before and Jackson Lewis provides the proper forum for me. Having worked with athletes in all major sports and entertainers in multiple mediums, I realized the important role that a firm like Jackson Lewis can play in complementing the legal skills of each organization’s General Counsel and existing outside counsel in our specialized area of labor and employment law.”
Clifton also recognized an opportunity in the collegiate market, where he wants to be the guiding force for his group in a number of different areas in that market, such as:
–advising college and university clients on compliance with the growing number of NCAA and NAIA rules;
–guiding institutions through increasingly complex regulations governing collegiate sports; and
–representing them at every stage of the compliance process, including audits, civil rights reviews and government investigations.
“I feel strongly that with the growth of college athletics, athletic departments are becoming more and more like businesses,” he said. “There is a need there to help them make the adjustment to the legal challenges in the labor and employment areas that come with that growth.”
Clifton added that reaching out to that market also parallels the philosophy of the firm.
“Growing up with the Jackson Lewis philosophy, I have always embraced the firm’s desire to educate and to inform people about the law,” he said. “When you look at the athletic departments at colleges and universities, many of their staff members do not have the time to focus on the ever changing federal and state rules and regulations in the labor and employment areas and have not had the opportunity to regularly deal with many of the these issues that we deal with on a daily basis.”
Clifton may be able to call on his own experience as a college student-athlete as an intangible in reaching out to that community. Clifton played basketball at Harvard University, where he graduated cum laude, before getting his law degree at Hofstra.
