Aspiring Sports Agent Going to Law School Forum

[beepboopbeep]

Do you people realize how disliked you are? I can count the number of people on one hand that I strongly dislike in real life, and there are more people in this forum than I have toes and fingers for that would make the cut. It's actually unbelievable that you all have managed to get me this worked up, as I am normally an EXTREMELY levelheaded guy who is nice to everyone and is friends with everyone I meet. I honestly feel bad for all of you. Please all go to one law school together. You all deserve each other.

Lol, I'm not the one with a chip on my shoulder. Just got annoyed that people feel the need to look down on others. I was taught to treat others with respect but I guess that is just me.

I'm just going to keep doing this.

[spleenworship]

Even diehard PI people sometimes quietly do 2L and 3L OCI, as a note. The lure of a job is... Strong...

Law school just encourages the hell out of sacrificing your dreams and buckling under. Another thing OP should think about.

[bound]

OP: There has been a lot of unnecessary acrimony on this thread. I understand why you feel defensive but I would like to level with you.

Getting a job as a sports agent is very much about who you know. If you don't already have great contacts (ie from being a college athlete on an elite football or basketball program or from being lifelong friends with an NBA lottery pick) you're going to have to build them yourself. If you're really all-in on this, the best thing you could do would be to put off law school for now and try to find a job as a personal assistant with an agent. In that way you could learn more about the how you get clients and build contacts. You may be able to get such a job now (as a regular college graduate) but you will have a much harder time obtaining one as a JD or law student (they'll likely think you're "over-qualified" to be a personal assistant).

More generally, something that many 0Ls do not appreciate is just how fast the law school train runs once you're on it. As soon as you arrive you're thrown into the grade scrum of first year. If you don't succeed your options become much more limited so you have to put all your effort into studying. Halfway through 1L summer, the fall recruiting calendar begins. If you don't find a job through fall recruiting (which occurs immediately before your 2L) year your options narrow significantly. Because of this, almost all non-diehard PI people participate in OCI and ultimately end up at a firm. Less than a year after entering law school your path is (hopefully) already set.

[mephistopheles]

fedfan, how edgy.

your posting is bad and you should feel bad

[bjsesq]

If you are willing to work at another job should the sports agent thing not work out, go to NYU. If the only thing that will work for you is sports agent, do something involving less financial risk than law school.

[FedFan123]

Ok you guys win, I'll play it safe and go to NYU and try to do BigLaw

[03152016]

Ok you guys win, I'll play it safe and go to NYU and try to do BigLaw

--ImageRemoved--

[03152016]

Ok you guys win, I'll play it safe and go to NYU and try to do BigLaw

Btw see you at NYU dude. Come join us in the c/o 2017 thread.

[goldeneye]

Good choice, dude. You can absolutely gun for doing really well and places like IMG have great internship programs. Good luck.

[Tuxedo]

Ok you guys win, I'll play it safe and go to NYU and try to do BigLaw

OP, sorry for the rude TLS treatment but:

1) It's on the Internet, and

2) Most people genuinely want to help people make good choices based on measurable and predictable outcomes.

There are exceptions to predictable outcomes everywhere (like that one Florida Coastal kid that somehow got a biglaw job). It's just that those are anomalies and you shouldn't be basing a career move exclusively on the fact that exceptions to rules exist and that you're destined to be one.

You're generally not going to get someone here to tell you "follow your dream!" when it's a kind of job that's only enjoyed by a fraction of a percent. And even if you're OK with doing biglaw temporarily, you probably need to be OK with doing it as a career. That's not to say that you shouldn't pursue a career as a sports agent, but you do need to be content with what might happen if you don't ever make it happen. And I do think that is reasonable, and it doesn't mean you're any less motivated to achieve your goal.

All the best!

[ManoftheHour]

You're generally not going to get someone here to tell you "follow your dream!" when it's a kind of job that's only enjoyed by a fraction of a percent. And even if you're OK with doing biglaw temporarily, you probably need to be OK with doing it as a career. That's not to say that you shouldn't pursue a career as a sports agent, but you do need to be content with what might happen if you don't ever make it happen. And I do think that is reasonable, and it doesn't mean you're any less motivated to achieve your goal.

All the best!

This. I think you should definitely have a reasonable fall back option that you are okay with while pursuing your dream. I don't think you should give up on your dream. Pursue big law and try to make the necessary connections while you are at NY. Maybe the chips will fall in place.

[hookem7]

Anecdotal story of course, so take with a large grain of salt, but it is entirely possible to realize your goal later on in your career without starting as a sports agent. A friend of mine's dad has been an agent for some backups/role players with the Texans and Rockets in Houston. He didn't start doing this until later in life after becoming an established lawyer for contracting and tax issues. This eventually lead to opportunities to represent players when they were recommended to him. This still doesn't compose the bulk of his practice but he said it has been a fun way to achieve a life goal. Obviously you will have to work in a market with pro teams and establish yourself as a capable lawyer, but it's possible. HTH

Also, an undergrad lecturer I took on Sports/Entertainment law became the Spurs general counsel after 20 years as a Federal prosecutor.

[jrob284755]

Hello everyone,

So I have used this website for the past few months as a resource, and I have now registered to get some much needed help. I believe that my situation is a little different than the norm, so if you could take this into consideration when answering then I would really appreciate that.

-The schools you are considering-NYU (50k scholarship), Virginia (no offer yet), Duke (60k), Northwestern (60k), Cornell (no offer yet), Washington University in St. Louis (120k scholarship), and University of Southern California (135k). Still haven't heard a word back from Harvard even though I applied in September, and also on the waitlists at Chicago and Columbia. I have withdrawn from all of my other accepted schools.

-The total Cost of Attendance (COA) of each. COA = cost of tuition + fees + books + cost of living (COL) + accumulated interest - scholarships. Here is a helpful calculator.

-How you will be financing your COA, i.e. loans, family, or savings---I come from a family that is well off with two BigLaw parents who are very happy for me to be going to law school, so they will be covering my expenses that are not covered by scholarship money. I will not be taking out loans.

-Where you are from and where you want to work, and other places where you have significant ties (if any)---I am from South Florida and I am very tired of the state of Florida, so I will definitely be looking to live somewhere else. I need to live somewhere with strong college athletics and professional sports (especially baseball and basketball since those are the sports I want to represent athletes in) so I am thinking out west in California or up north like Chicago, Boston, or New York.

-Your general career goals--------Becoming a sports agent is the end goal. For those of you that aren't aware of what that entails, it basically means I want to negotiate contracts and endorsement deals for professional athletes and also help them with any other legal/financial matters such as arbitration, mediation, etc.

-Your LSAT/GPA numbers -------173 and 3.70

-How many times you have taken the LSAT-----once


Considering my rather unique career goals, what school do you think would be best for me? As a sports agent, I will be trying to sell myself to college athletes as to why I would be the best choice for them as an agent. I will of course be selling myself to the athlete as well as their parents who normally play a significant role in choosing an agent. For this reason, I believe that lay prestige is a much more important factor for me than it normally would be for most 0L's. Out of all of my schools I have been accepted to, I would think that Duke has the best lay prestige (think Drew Rosenhaus) and of course Harvard would have the best of all if I were lucky enough to go there.

Since I won't be taking out loans, money obviously isn't the biggest factor here. Of course I want to lighten the burden on my parents as much as possible, but they are insisting on covering the cost of law school, so that is pretty hard to turn down.

I also wouldn't be totally against doing BigLaw for a couple years straight out of law school in order to build up finances and connections, but my dream is to be a sports agent and I want to achieve that goal as soon as possible out of law school.

Please let me hear your thoughts and whether or not you need any other information. One other thing I'm interested in is do you think I can negotiate with any of these schools? My offers from the T14 are pretty comparable and I don't know how much they would care about my offers from those non-T14 schools. Thank you very much in advance!

I can try to add some perspective as I interned in a sports agency for a CPA who did the tax work for the players. Luckily it was a pretty small office so I got a lot of exposure to all the agents as well. First off if you desire to do anything other than be on the phone all day and night than head for the hills now because that's pretty much all I saw. And don't think it's negotiating with GMs or playing nike off Adidas it's more like haggling with the DMV over lapsed car registrations. Sure there are contract negotiations but that's the exception rather than the norm. Parlaying off that same theme from what I saw it would be incredibly difficult to start as a solo practice. The support staff needed to manage anything more than a few clients is not inconsiderable and those people need to be paid, health insurance etc. So you would have to run your business on top of running the affairs of your clients.

The other reason a solo practice isn't a great idea is you will need leads into clients and than when you find them you need to convince them you can handle all of their interests better than guys at a big firm and that again comes back to having support staff and other professionals in complementary disciplines such as tax investments marketing etc. the best idea would be to intern either with agents or a marketing firm hoping they keep you on and make them an apprentice.

In regards to law school choice I can't speak definitively on that because less than half the agents were lawyers. Most were actually CPAs ( even some of the lawyers) and some were just int the business for a long time either in sports or entertainment. What I did learn was that they focused on making the families (mostly the moms and grandmas) feel comfortable. The athletes and the dads were sold with the numbers, the moms were the ones who they had to convince they were more than business partners but care takers. As a freshly minted grad that's a hard sell so again working for some established guys makes life easier.

Hope this helps PM me with any questions you have

[patogordo]

OP now that you've come to jesus can we see some of those angry PMs?

[timbs4339]

Since I've been reTLSed ITT, I'll add my two cents based on my convos with sports lawyers.

There are two ways into the business:

1) OP mentioned the commissioners. The way to do something like that is to go to a biglaw firm, get on in a group or with a partner who represents sports leagues, hope they take a liking to your work, angle to get an in-house job, and try to work your way up from there. This is just like trying to use biglaw as a way into finance or energy or any other major industry. Hell, I met one woman who didn't even want to be a "sports lawyer," when she went to Proskauer, just happened to do a lot of work for a league, and is now working for that league in-house. Hell, she might end up in a high end managment position some day.

I know lawyers who work with league clients for a living. It is not sexy. They do not get to meet pro athletes on the reg or sit in luxury boxes. They do the same litigation or deal work that they would do if they represented a tech giant or bank.

2) The second way is to be a former D-I athlete or someone with preexisting contacts and leverage that job into being a sports agent. You don't need to go to a T14 to do that, but OP seems to have the right idea that going to a higher ranked school will give him a backup option on the great likelihood that his plan fails.

OP: The reason people are jumping down your throat is that you come off as someone who thinks that all you need when you have hard work + interest in sports is LAW SCHOOL. Look, maybe you were an ex-DI athlete and know a bunch of people looking for agents, and my advice doesn't apply. But if you are just some college student who really knows a lot of shit about college football, you have to understand that hundreds of entering law students this year will have those three things and the vast, vast majority of them will not become sports agents. Law school isn't a way for you to jump the line in front of all the other kids with no connections and no experience.

[Hipster but Athletic]

big-time agent that i talked to did biglaw and told everyone he wanted to be an agent all the time, and then someone made a connection for him a few years into the jerb. that connection liked the fact that the dude was big-law and loved sports, and effectively took him in-house to his agency and mentored him, and made him big-time.

so I recommend going to NYU, getting a jerb at Proskauer, and telling everyone you know, after you get the job, you eventually want to be an agent.

Even if you don't get to be an agent, you can just do all kinds of awesome glamorous sports-law stuff at Proskauer, like you know, figuring out how to get around CBAs to do endorsement deals w/o team's permission!

[FedFan123]

big-time agent that i talked to did biglaw and told everyone he wanted to be an agent all the time, and then someone made a connection for him a few years into the jerb. that connection liked the fact that the dude was big-law and loved sports, and effectively took him in-house to his agency and mentored him, and made him big-time.

so I recommend going to NYU, getting a jerb at Proskauer, and telling everyone you know, after you get the job, you eventually want to be an agent.

Even if you don't get to be an agent, you can just do all kinds of awesome glamorous sports-law stuff at Proskauer, like you know, figuring out how to get around CBAs to do endorsement deals w/o team's permission!

Looked at Proskauer's website, specifically their pages on their sports law practice, and I must admit that it was very enticing. This could be something that I would be interested in.

[patogordo]

you seem very savvy

[FedFan123]

you seem very savvy

you don't

[sublime]

..

[PrideandGlory1776]

Voted NYU - but didn't get the chance to read everything above but based on the other options I don't think it'll be necessary anyways it looks to be about as clear as can be - 50k at NYU is just flat out the best options compared to the other opportunities so barring some extraordinary circumstance NYU by a mile

[Hipster but Athletic]

you seem very savvy

you don't

He is decently so. There's just an anti-confidence sentiment on this website though and he's an internet nerd who buys into echo chambering so just chill. I'm currently in a fight against pessimism and for more Dr Seuss philosophy (moving mountains, be you, etc), so you might need to wait a week or so for TLS to be chiller.

[patogordo]

my brother-in-law is actually in the market for an agent but i'm not giving you the referral now

[Mauve.Dino]

I cried. Good Lord, this thread is epic!

[wons]

Not to continue jumping down OPs throat, but a LS story is appropriate here:

Back when I was at CLS in 2009, the Rays front office came to CLS to have lunch and talk with students who were interested in sports. In another lifetime (and now, only on Sundays) I was a reasonably skillful sabermetrician, and several of my saber friends have gone on to work in front offices, so I ended up in the group of students who had lunch.

Anyways, we're sitting at the table over shitty sandwiches with Sternberg and his crew of former GS guys, and someone asks him about working in sports. His response, as accurately as I can recall it, is as follows:

"You want to work in sports? Fine. You can come work for me. Tomorrow, or the day after you graduate. I don't care. You made it here, you're enthusastic. So you're good enough for us. But here's the deal - I'm going to pay you $20,000 a year. Still interested? Because if I go to every top law and business school in the country and make that offer, someone will say yes, and I only need one new guy a year.

Anyone interested?"

(silence)

"That's what I thought."