E. Jason Tremblay is the Chicago Office Managing Partner at Saul Ewing, as well as a Vice Chair of the Firm’s Labor and Employment Practice Group. As an employment law expert, as well as a business attorney and litigator, Tremblay services companies in many industries on a wide range of transactional, counseling and litigation matters.
He also has a deeply developed legal practice in the sports industry, including representation of various professional sports teams and sports leagues. His work with such clients includes drafting employment and other agreements, conducting internal investigations, responding to governmental audits and conducting regular day-to-day human resources counseling, all with the goal of avoiding exposure, liability or negative publicity.
To learn more, we sat down with Jason for the following interview.
Question: What are the most significant workplace trends you are seeing that shape client needs right now?
Answer: First and foremost, the implementation and use of AI is dominating the conversation across all industries, from whether to use it, to how to use it, to what guardrails or restrictions are needed when using it. The answers to these questions vary widely depending on the company, the industry, and the pace at which AI platforms are evolving. Secondarily, workplace flexibility and the successful implementation of hybrid work arrangements continue to be a topic of conversation across many industries – the goal being to marry flexibility with ensuring client needs are satisfied.
Q: How has your leadership role influenced the way you approach complex labor and employment matters across industries?
A: Holding leadership roles at my firm has allowed me to truly “step in the shoes” of many of my clients. Specifically, in my role as Chicago Office Managing Partner (one of the firm’s largest offices with over 100 employees), the daily issues and decisions facing many of my clients are now very similar to the issues and decisions I face in my leadership role. As a result, my leadership positions at the firm have most certainly given me unique experiences, insights and perspectives that have allowed me to be a better service provider to my clients.
Q: What are the biggest compliance challenges employers face today, particularly with the rapid evolution of workplace regulations and employee expectations?
A: One of the most difficult challenges for employers today, especially those with employees and/or operations in different states (which is prevalent in the sports industry) is employment law compliance. Employment law has become increasing local and state-specific, resulting in a patchwork of laws related to issues such as permissible pre-employment inquiries, employee leave rights and benefits. Given that these laws can widely vary (and sometimes even be inconsistent), navigating the different laws with a multi-jurisdictional workforce or operations has become a full-time job.
Q: You’ve shown a strong focus on sports law—how does your labor and employment practice and background translate to issues facing teams, leagues, and athletes?
A: The sports industry is unique in many ways but primarily because sports teams and leagues are public-facing and continuously exposed to public scrutiny. If not handled properly, one employee termination can turn into a news cycle headline. In this regard, and over my career, I have been hired by companies in the sports industry on a wide range of matters, such as conducting internal investigations and audits, engaging in executive-level contract negotiations and handling employee disputes, complaints or charges which, if not handled correctly, can lead to significant financial and/or reputational harm to the sports team or league.
Q: With the rise of NIL, athlete activism, and changing governance structures, where do you see the biggest legal risks and opportunities in the sports industry?
A: As a labor and employment attorney (and solely speaking from that perspective), these issues have greatly blurred whether or not athletes are employees of their school or team. By way of example, a student who is getting paid by booster-driven collectives for NIL purposes to play a college sport appears, under general employment principles, to be an employee. And, whether a college athlete is a student, contractor or employee has significant legal implications for the sports industry from issues of what they must be paid, to what benefits and rights they may possess as employees, to who has the right or ability to govern those rights. Complicating this analysis is the fact that there is no uniform set of rules or regulations governing these issues, leading to significant legal risk and uncertainty in the industry. On the flip side, however, I would argue that the opportunities for the sports industry actually lie in some of these inherent risks, specifically, that the sport industry has the ability to build and/or create a college or other sports model that works for athletes, colleges and universities and leagues at the same time.
