News Archive
Dean Emeritus Roberts to join Bose McKinney & Evans as Of Counsel
06/18/2014
The law firm of Bose McKinney & Evans LLP announced on June 18, 2014 that Professor Gary R. Roberts will join the firm effective September 1st as of counsel, concentrating in sports law. Roberts is the Dean Emeritus and Gerald L. Bepko Professor of Law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis, where he will continue to teach. He was the dean of the school from 2007-2013.
“Having taught, researched, and written about sports law for over 30 years and consulted with various sports clients during that time, it will be fun and exciting to be able to put some of the knowledge I have acquired to work by practicing a little law on the side," Roberts said. "I will be continuing as a full-time member of the faculty but blending that with some real world work at that will strengthen and inform my teaching as well as perhaps build some bridges between the law school and the local bar. It’s a really exciting new challenge that is particularly gratifying in that I will be working now at both the law school named after Bob McKinney and at the terrific law firm founded by Bob McKinney that bears his name.”
After practicing law for several years at the Washington, DC, law firm of Covington & Burling where he worked with future NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue representing various sports clients, most significantly the National Football League, Roberts joined the faculty of Tulane Law School in 1984 where he quickly developed a substantial reputation in the field of sports law. Roberts has written several major law review articles and book chapters on sports law topics and has co-authored the leading text on sports law used in U.S. law schools (soon to be republished in its fifth edition). He has been a frequent speaker at sports law conferences and programs throughout the world, has given the opening 90-minute presentation at the annual Sports Lawyers Association conference for over 20 years, and has testified before Congressional committees on nine different occasions relating to sports issues.
While teaching and writing about sports law, Roberts has done extensive consulting work over the years on behalf of a variety of sports clients such as Minor League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, UEFA (the European soccer federation), FIBA (the world basketball federation), the English Premier Football League, the English Football League, the Sugar Bowl, the Baltimore Orioles, the Seattle Mariners owners, the Continental Basketball Association, the American Horse Shows Association, the National Hot Rod Association, Bally’s Casinos, and various current and former NFL and NBA players and coaches. And while the Faculty Athletics Representative or Senate Athletics Committee Chair for Tulane University (22 years) and IUPUI (4 years), Roberts served on several, and chaired a few, NCAA and Conference USA committees, and from 2003-07 was a member of the NCAA Division I Academics, Eligibility & Compliance Cabinet.
More recently, Roberts was appointed in 2012 as an arbitrator/member of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, the independent judicial body that resolves disputes throughout the international sports industry. In that capacity, he was also appointed to be one of nine CAS arbitrators on site at the Sochi Winter Olympics in February 2014 to resolve the emergency appeals relating to the Games.
Since 1987, Roberts has been an officer and a member of the board of directors of the Sports Lawyers Association, for which he served as president from 1995-97. He edited the SLA’s newsletter, The Sports Lawyer, from 1987 through 2010, and he created and supervised publication of the SLA’s annual academic law review, The Sports Lawyers Journal, for 15 years.
Prior to becoming the dean at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in 2007, Roberts was the Deputy Dean, Sumter Davis Marks Professor of Law and Director of the Sports Law Program at Tulane Law School, where he was on the faculty for 24 years. At Tulane, he developed and directed the first sports law certification program in the U.S.
Roberts graduated from Bradley University in 1970 and Stanford Law School in 1975 where he was articles editor of the Stanford Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. In 1975-76, he clerked for Judge Ben C. Duniway of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. From 1976-83, he was an attorney with Covington & Burling, the then largest law firm in Washington, DC, where he engaged in antitrust, international trade, labor, contract and trademark litigation.
In recent years, Roberts has taught sports law, antitrust, labor law and business enterprises.
