The common perception in the sports law field is that there are too many freshly minted lawyers chasing too few sports law jobs.
Rodney Smith, the president of Southern Virginia University, is poised to debunk that theory.
Beginning on August 15, Smith will become director of its Center for Sports Law and Policy at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. Smith suggested to Sports Litigation Alert that graduates of the Center, which opens this fall, can get jobs in the sports industry that haven’t always been occupied by attorneys. They can then utilize their legal background to build a successful career.
“For example, there’s no reason that our graduates can’t initially secure a job in compliance in a college athletic department,” said Smith. “Then ten years later, they are promoted to athletic director.”
In short, Smith wants the Center, among other things, to promote the benefits of hiring an attorney, who has been trained in sports law, for a role in an administrative and/or policy role in the sports industry.
“Students, who attend law school with the idea of becoming a sports lawyer, typically think that means representing athletes,” Smith said. “In truth, those jobs are very few.”
Instead, the Center will hone in on the administrative and policy side of sports law, producing a better-rounded attorney for the sports law industry. “Policy leads to law,” he said. “Thomas Jefferson students will be working on cutting-edge policy issues and that will open doors for them. Their experience will be an interesting entrée in any employment interview.”
One of the Center’s objectives will also be to partner with the sports law industry to help place the students in positions where they can thrive.
To that end, he hopes to work with two of the preeminent sports law programs in higher education – Florida Coastal School of Law and Marquette University School of Law – to widen the net of employment opportunities in the industry as well as collaborate in other ways.
One of his first tasks will be to stage the Center’s first symposium, set for Nov. 18-19, which will focus, among other things, on antitrust and policy issues surrounding the Bowl Championship Series.
In the spring of 2012, Smith hopes to stage another symposium that will weigh the implications of moving a major professional sports franchise.
Smith is no stranger to sports law, having served as a member of the NCAA’s Division 1 Infractions Appeals Committee and co-authored a casebook on sports law.
Those qualifications and many others made the school’s decision to start a sports law program an easy one.
“The addition of Rod Smith to the TJSL faculty provides an extraordinary opportunity to enhance the scholarly strength of the faculty, while at the same time providing for a concentration of courses in an area of particular interest to our students and of special interest to the San Diego area,” said Dean Rudy Hasl.
