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The course will use a mix of traditional case law, significant decisions decided by arbitrators, the instructor and his guest speakers’ practical experiences, and current sports law issues taken from the sports and sports business pages.
It is my plan to utilize a mix of lecturing, personal experiences and hypothetical questions drawn from current pending cases and/or issues, with the goal of stimulating class discussion and interaction. I also hope to have 3 to 4 guest speakers on some of the above topics to discuss their experiences and answer questions. I also hope to create debate in the class by taking a particular topic and assigning portions of the class to one side and portions to the other side.
The student’s grade will be based on class participation and a final research paper. Class participation will account for 20% of the grade and will be measured based on a number of criteria, including: the quality (not quantity) of the students remarks in class; the professionalism the student exhibits in class, that is, does he/she think and speak like a lawyer and is he/she respectful of opposing points of view; and the level of preparation exhibited by the remarks, that is, do the remarks indicate the student has read the materials or even gone beyond the materials to secondary sources. As for the final research paper, which will account for 80% of the student’s grade, the paper will be in the form of a memorandum to a Club’s General Counsel on a current issue that relates to one of the topics covered in class. The memo will not exceed 10 pages, single spaced (double spaced between paragraphs). I will provide 6-8 topics that the students can choose from for their memo. Students will also be given the option of choosing their own topic so long as they submit that topic to me for my approval at least 1 week prior to the last scheduled class. Papers written for this course cannot be used to satisfy the upper-level writing requirement.
