Sports Lawyer | Professional Sport | Build Your Own Practice
Yorkshire | Senior Associate / Legal Director level

There are plenty of Sports Law opportunities where you're joining an established team, inheriting a caseload and slotting into someone else's structure.

This isn't one of them.

QED's client is an entrepreneurial, growing law firm looking for a senior Sports Solicitor / Sports Lawyer who can help take an already established Sports practice to its next stage.

The practice was built from the ground up and has developed from a predominantly football-focused offering into a broader Sports Law practice covering football, rugby, athletics, tennis and table tennis.

There is already quality work and an established team around the practice. The opportunity is now to add a senior lawyer who can bring their own expertise, relationships and ideas and play a genuine role in determining where the practice goes next.

The role would suit an experienced Sports Lawyer, Sports Solicitor or Sports Litigation Lawyer who wants more autonomy and commercial ownership over their career.

You could expect to work across a broad range of matters within professional sport, with the existing practice having particular strength in sports disputes and litigation and the wider firm able to support clients across other areas of Sports Law.

The work currently spans a range of sports and can involve matters relating to:

• Professional football and football clubs
• Rugby and professional rugby organisations
• Athletes and sporting professionals
• Sports organisations and governing bodies
• Commercial relationships within sport
• Sports disputes and litigation
• Wider contentious and regulatory issues affecting sporting clients

The precise shape of the role will depend heavily on what you bring. If you have developed a particular specialism within Sports Law, Sports Litigation, commercial sports work or another area of professional sport, there is genuine scope to develop that further.

The firm is particularly interested in someone at Senior Associate level and above, with around 6+ years PQE likely to be a useful benchmark, although the quality of your experience, relationships and commercial proposition will matter considerably more than the number.

You'll need to be able to demonstrate:

• Strong experience advising clients within the Sports Law sector.
• The technical ability to manage complex matters with a high degree of autonomy.
• Experience in contentious, commercial or advisory sports work.
• A credible network within professional sport, or a demonstrable ability to develop one.
• Commercial awareness and an understanding of how to turn relationships into a sustainable practice.
• The ambition to develop your own client base and specialist offering.
• The ability to put together and execute a realistic business plan for the growth of your practice.

The firm isn't expecting someone to arrive with a fully formed £1m practice on day one.

What matters is whether you can articulate what you would build, who you would build it with and how you would get there.

You'll have the freedom to develop that plan, backed by an existing Sports team, shared support and access to wider expertise across the firm. The existing Partner has been given that same opportunity himself, having built the Sports practice from a blank canvas after moving from a larger commercial firm.

There is also a wider Insolvency practice within the business, with the two teams able to share resources and expertise where appropriate.

For the right individual, this could be a Legal Director-level appointment, with the potential to progress towards Partnership for someone who demonstrates the ability to build a significant practice.

The culture is entrepreneurial and deliberately different from the larger commercial firms. There is greater autonomy, a more relaxed approach to working practices and less of the traditional hours and billing pressure often associated with large national practices.

Most importantly, this is an opportunity to have a genuine say in the future direction of a growing Sports Law practice rather than simply becoming another fee earner within an established department.

If you're an experienced Sports Solicitor or Sports Lawyer and have been considering what your next stage could look like, particularly if you have ambitions to build something around your own network and expertise, we'd be interested in speaking with you.

For a confidential discussion and to learn more about the firm behind the opportunity, please contact Eoghan at QED Legal Recruitment Ltd.