[SOUND] Welcome back to Representing the Professional Athlete massive open online course with Case Western Reserve University and Coursera. We welcome today Carol Couse from Mills Reeve in Manchester, Hi Carol, welcome. >> Hi. >> So we're going to get started here with a brief introduction into your career and your background. And what you get to do basically on a daily basis. >> I think it's worth sort of just going back to the university days when I was actually studying. because I think at the time, I wasn't aware that doing well in Spanish would open up so many doors for me down the line. But I think taking languages at that early stage definitely was something that has given me an advantage now. So once I'd done my law degree, I then did my training contract with a commercial law firm where the was a sports law department. So I kind of fought hard to get some experience in that team. And my first case was defending a greyhound that had been banned for life for biting. No, so it was a great case, really. Got my teeth into it [LAUGH]. And I just knew, from that stage really, that sports law was for me. And I got the opportunity to do quite a lot of work for them. He was a client at the time. So I go to Harrods for meetings and meet and Al-Fayed, the chairman. And I just had such great exposure, at an early stage, to clients and how the sports industry worked. So after completing my training, I then chose to go in house and seconded to a football agency. And the agency represented Wayne Rooney, he was England National captain, and he was 17, 18 at the time. And I actually went to have 18th birthday party. It was sort of one of my roles as the in-house lawyer to make sure nothing went wrong. And yeah, but mainly did commercials contracts there really. Doing endorsement deals, image rights, that sort of thing. And then after that, I worked in-house Manchester United for about a year. As a United fan, that was sort of my dream job. Again, I was mainly working on the commercial side of things. So doing websites, deals, say, in Asia, well, Far East really, and for United. And I loved it, absolutely loved that experience. And then for the next sort of nine years or so, I predominantly worked for football clubs. More on the regulatory side of things. So dealing with transfers and disputes, but also keeping up the commercial work as well. And I think one of the things is with sports' law it's such a niche area that actually, you need to be quite generalist a lawyer within that field. And 18 months ago I moved to Milton Reeve. I was finding that on the back of Spanish language skills, I was getting approached by quite a lot of Spanish speaking players, and agents, and managers. And because I was working predominantly for clubs, there were obviously the inherent conflicts there. So with the move to another firm, I've been able to do more of the Spanish speaking work, which I already enjoy. While also at the same time, doing clerk work as well. >> Fantastic, we often say that the best sports lawyers, or the best lawyers are sports lawyers. Because we do have to have such a strong background in so many different areas. >> Yeah. >> But yeah, so following along with that. The interaction with personnel and agents. Generally, how do you interact with players, managers, chairmen, the clubs in general, and then their subsequent agents? >> I think it depends on a sort of case-by-case basis. Say for players, I mean, we did Alexis Sanchez and Angel Di Maria's deals. And I would deal with the agents and the Spanish lawyers actually, rather than the players directly, generally. Because these transfers happens at sort of such a fast pace that you've probably got about two days to get the deal done. And so you're dealing with the professionals and getting that done. But then with other players I do have the personal relationship with them. So Victor Valdez, Ionesco Tierez, Pablo Zabaleta. Yeah, I'd had some sort of personal contact with them but that's just on a case-by-case basis. Clubs, it's really on a club by club basis. Some clubs will have in-house lawyers, and they tend to be ones that would instruct external lawyers. Others don't have their own lawyers, so it might be their club secretaries, it could be their finance director sometimes, or the chief executives that instruct you. Sometimes, it could be the chairman. It just depends on how hands on a role the individual's have within the clubs. Often, I mean, agents and lawyers sort of, in my kind of, particular area of Spanish speakers. And I tend to find that they're probably the people I tend to deal with most. So often, the South American players may move to sort of Spain before they then move to England. And as a result of that, the agents and the players have Spanish lawyers, who then instruct me to deal with the English side of things. And so sometimes it can be a bit convoluted. But these relationships are very well protected. And so if it's the case, you take your instructions from the lawyers or the intermediaries. You have to respect the relationship that they then have with the player. And yeah, sometimes we deal with managers as well. Need to deal with Alex Ferguson fairly frequently when I was at United. And say, if it's a case of doing a disciplinary matter, where I worked for the manager person, you take the instructions from him. But by and large, really, it's going to be the club senior, being a board member, that instructs you. >> Yes, fantastic. So talking about agents now, what effects have you seen of the regulation or rather the deregulation of the world of agents now intermediaries within football? >> From my perspective, nothing's rarely change too much. I think the agents themselves, obviously, the marketplace has opened up. So there's no exams that agents, now intermediaries, have to pass in order to act as an intermediary. So their fear was that this was going to become kind of the wild west and that anyone could act as an agent. I think the only difference I've really noticed is perhaps that players, parents, and siblings are starting to take more of a role in terms of advice to the players. And I think actually that benefits lawyers in a sense. Because the agents may have that experience, but the sibling or the father may actually know more about what the player wants, personally. But may need is assistance of, say, a lawyer, in order to draft the contracts or help with negotiations. I haven't really seen too much difference. The one thing that agents were speculating about was this recommended cap on commissions. So FIFA's recommended a 3% cap on commissions for agents. And industry practice has sort of dictated that it's 5%. So that's 5% of the guaranteed gross income of a player during the term of the contract. And so there was a sense that maybe this would really drive agency fees down. But I think for the big name players, that's just not going to happen. They will command transfer fees, wages, and their agents will commands the requisite agency fee to get the deal done. So I haven't really seen too many changes on the back of these regulations. >> Perfect, so continuing right along here. Client recruitment, obviously at this point you're well established within the industry. Do you have a particular profile of client or at this point do they sort of come to you and you get to choose who you want to represent and how you want to represent them? >> No, I think we've got a really mixed bag of clients. And I think, as well, it depends on the time of year in terms of the type of work that comes in. And therefore the type of clients you have. In the transfer window I'd say a lot of work would be transfer related. So this could be from clubs, or agents, really. And a lot of work, therefore, is kind of reactive. You're dealing in short time frames to turn documentation around. I think outside of transfer windows, a lot of the work is contentious. And again, that goes back to your point that you're saying about sport lawyers having to be pretty broad brush, they cover a lot of different areas. But also, in my case, it's contentious and non-contentious work. So I'm increasingly finding that because of my sort of language skills, I'm getting a lot of work from Spanish speaking players. So probably one example is, on the contentious side of things, we've got a claim for Horace Gutierrez in Argentina, a previous Argentina National player and Newcastle player. And he suffered testicular cancer, and was treated in such a way, by Newcastle, that he's now bringing claim for discrimination. So that's one claim that we're bringing, and that's in front of the ordinary courts. But then we've got other cases on both Spanish speaking and non Spanish speaking players. And they may be at domestic level, so I've got claims for both a club and an agent. Again, just in terms of, generally, fees that haven't been paid. I've got claims before FIFA, again, an agent and a player. Again, money not being paid. And I've got a one for a player. His salary hadn't been paid. And the other is a training compensation claim for a club. So, I think there's sort of, I don't know there's a definitive profile. I think if, I guess, I've got a niche within a niche, it's the Spanish speaking market. But I would say, we deal with clubs, players, agents, and sponsors as well, actually. That's, generally speaking, outside of the transfer window, commercial deals and abroad are always getting done. And so that's kind of quite a staple type of work that will always be needed. In terms of client recruitment, I think the contacts you have already know your worth, and they're hopefully repeat referrers of work. So when it comes to say clubs, often in-house lawyers will deal with the book work for clubs. But they'll come to you when there's a complex matter that they can't deal with in house. And often that's a contentious matter, hence, that mix of contentious and non-contentious work. But I think also a really good source of work are through intermediaries. Whether that be pure agents or people that are just referrers of work, so they accountants, they could be financial advisors. They could just be contacts with managers or agents, and they're quite good repeat referrers of work. But also I think client recruitment comes down to hard work, it's business development at the end of the day. So I'm active, speaking internationally, domestically, at sport seminars and congresses. I write pretty extensively in English and Spanish. To sort of keep my name out there. You just need to keep the contacts up. I find that foreign lawyers are quite good referrers of work because obviously they their own areas of expertise and their own territory. But, if something happens with one of their clients in the UK, for example, they need to defer to your expertise in your marketplace. Just as you would then refer work on hopefully to them in their marketplace. But yeah, I guess I try and be a thought leader, I suppose, in my areas of expertise. So if there is a case that I've done, or if there's something that's particularly important, then I do try and write about it and publicize it or speak about it at conferences. >> Yeah, so you obviously bring up the contentious nature of things quite a bit throughout there. Is that a part of it that you enjoy or do you feel like someone that's trying to follow a similar path and needs to be able to enjoy, to some level, the competitive contentious nature of it or would you say maybe not? >> Yeah, I think on the contentious side of things, that's when actually, I guess, it's more of the academic side of the work. Because ultimately, when you're doing a transfer, you're just getting the deal done. You're completing the paperwork, you're advising on commission negotiations. When it comes to a contentious matter, chances are that it's going to be a legal or sort of technical legal argument that one or other side is going to run. And so you therefore need to be totally up to speed on national law and the law of contract. And I think that's probably one of the most challenging areas of the work that I do. But probably one of the most rewarding as well, I think. [SOUND]
