Oregon Law Summer Sports Institute Called “the Best in the World”
This July, Oregon Law will host its award-winning Summer Sports Institute for the sixth consecutive year. The Institute brings together the nation’s best sports law faculty to provide 20-30 students with a five-week in-depth study of the world of sports law.
According to Professor Matthew Mitten, who is Executive Director of the National Sports Institute and former President of the Sports Lawyers Association, the Institute has grown to be “the premier summer sports law program in the United States, perhaps in the world.” The Institute has welcomed students from 57 different law schools and guest speakers from as far away as Brazil, Spain, Germany, and Australia.
The Institute’s secret sauce has been to invite more than a dozen of the leading sports law professors from across the nation to discuss antitrust, labor and employment law, intellectual property and other aspects of business law in the context of the sports industry, with a unique mix of classes, lectures and career panels. The sessions also address the important issues of gender and race discrimination as well as off-the-field violence by and against athletes.
Professor Robert Illig, the Institute’s founder and director, said, “Although not every student who is interested in learning about sports law will actually go on to practice in that field, many of them will go on to practice business law. By using the sports industry as a case study, the Institute provides students with an opportunity to explore business law in a sports-law context.” Students also explore appropriate dispute resolution strategies in sports by participating in sports licensing contract negotiation courses offered by the Oregon Law Appropriate Dispute Resolution Center.
In addition to of course being the home of the Ducks, Oregon is the headquarters of Nike and adidas, the heart of American track and field. Oregon’s deep sports heritage has enabled the Institute to host a number of important guests, such as lawyers from Nike, adidas, and Columbia Sportswear, in-house counsel from the Seahawks, Diamondbacks, Sounders, Angels, and Trail Blazers, and league and regulatory counsel from the NCAA, USATF, and Pac-12. For more about the Institute, take a look at the YouTube piece here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mAv1mNM5pg.