Sports & Entertainment

Roy L. Furman ’63 is vice chairman of Jefferies & Company and chairman of Jefferies Capital Partners. He has also produced five Tony Award-winning plays and musicals on Broadway and currently has five shows running.

Exactly how far does an agent need to go to keep a professional athlete happy? Just ask Jeff Schwartz, who represents Boston Celtics all-star player Paul Pierce. “[Paul] sometimes calls me at 4 in the morning, just to see if I’ll answer my phone, which I don’t do anymore,” Schwartz recently told Harvard Law School students. “First thing in the morning, I call him back and he says, ‘too late, I’m dead.’ ” Harvard Law School students enjoyed this and other behind-the-scenes tidbits from the world of professional athlete representation in a recent two-hour Q&A hosted by HLS Lecturer Peter Carfagna ’79 for his class, “Sports and the Law: Representing the Professional Athlete.”

Two years after considering the possibility of work stoppages in major league sports, the annual Harvard Law School Sports Law Symposium this year examined unresolved issues in the aftermath of collective bargaining agreements, as well as the ongoing problems of concussions and performance-enhancing drugs.

In early March at Harvard Law School,  Lesley Rosenthal ’89, author of the new book "Good Counsel: Meeting the Legal Needs of Nonprofits," discussed the career path that has led her to be vice president, general counsel and secretary of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

In a panel discussion sponsored by HLS Lecturer on Law Peter Carfagna ’79 and Harvard Law School's Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law, “Negotiating with The League: Representing the NFLPA,” Peter Kendall, a retired NFL player who was involved in the league’s summer contract renegotiations offered an insider’s account of the collective bargaining victory that preserved this fall's season.

With a mixture of storytelling about his groundbreaking role in amateur basketball and critiques of the NCAA and NBA, former sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro gave the keynote address at the third annual HLS Sports Law Symposium on March 25.

Since signing with the Boston Celtics in August 2010, Shaquille O’Neal has posed as a statue in Harvard Square, sang the “Cheers” theme song at the Cheers bar in Boston, and conducted the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall. He can now add “helped teach a class at Harvard Law School” to that list.

In the spring of 2007, HLS Professor David Wilkins ’80 asked the members of his seminar to envision their futures. One student foresaw a federal judicial appointment. Another wanted to make partner at a prominent law firm. Also in the class was Daron Roberts ’07, who had a different sort of answer. He wanted to be head coach at a national football powerhouse.

As a spate of head injuries in football made national headlines in October, students in a Sports Law class at Harvard Law School got a firsthand account of the dangers—and consequences—of head trauma in the NFL.

Jeannie Suk ’02 has gained tenure as a professor of law at Harvard. The faculty voted to grant tenure on Oct. 14 and Harvard University approved it immediately thereafter.

Bruce Ramer ’58 divides his time between entertainment giants and pro bono causes.

Sports agent Ronald M. Shapiro ’67 has a dream roster of clients that includes more baseball Hall of Famers than any other agent, including Cal Ripken Jr., Brooks Robinson, Eddie Murray, Kirby Puckett, and such future Hall of Fame probables as 2009 American League MVP Joey Mauer, for whom Shapiro recently negotiated a $184 million contract with the Minnesota Twins.

As the three most popular sports leagues in the United States all confront the end of their collective bargaining agreements in 2011, industry representatives previewed the key issues affecting negotiation, during the second annual Sports and the Law Symposium held on March 26.

Lecturer on Law Peter Carfagna ’79 has been a practicing sports law attorney for nearly 30 years. A partner at Partner, Calfee, Halter & Griswold…

When he was a student at Harvard College, Ashwin Krishnan ’10 wrote about sports for the Crimson. This year, as a 3L at Harvard Law…

This January, Cleveland Browns Quarterback Brady Quinn brought his expertise to the Harvard Law School classroom as a guest in Lecturer on Law Peter Carfagna’s course “Representing the Professional Athlete.” Through a frank two hour question-and-answer session, students got an inside look at the numerous behind-the-scenes negotiations that are a part of every athlete’s career.

On Saturday, Oct. 17, the Harvard Law School men’s crew raced in the 45th Head of the Charles, securing its position as the dominant law school on the river. The Head of the Charles is the world’s largest two-day rowing event, involving more than 7,500 athletes and 300,000 spectators from around the world. The HLS crew deftly navigated the three-mile course in 17 minutes and 47 seconds.

This fall, a group of Harvard Law School students – Ashwin Krishnan ’10, Josh Podoll ’11, and Ryan Gauthier ’10 – will officially launch a new journal called the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law.

HLS Professor Alan Dershowitz wrote “Baseball errs with lax penalty on pitchers who take aim at hitters,” an op-ed that appeared in the Aug. 19, 2009, edition of The Boston Globe.

On Monday, April 20th, several Harvard Law School students ran in the 113th Boston Marathon, competing with more than 23,000 other athletes from around the world.