Category: News Feeds

Why, it was just Wednesday that we were celebrating the return to public life of Gary Gensler. The mopey but crusading former CFTC chair had last been seen in Elizabeth Warren’s fantasy Cabinet for a Hillary Clinton administration that would never happen and angrily throwing his BlackBerry against a wall. Now, he’s the HBIC—along with Ted Kaufman—of all financial regulatory appointments in the going-to-happen Biden administration, and wouldn’t you know he thinks he has just the guy to run the SEC.

Attention legal technology startups: Here is your chance to compete to be featured as a presenter and exhibitor in the fifth-annual — and first virtual — Startup Alley at ABA TECHSHOW, the American Bar Association’s annual legal technology conference, to be held virtually on March 8-12, 2021. 

Today officially kicks off the call for entries for Startup Alley, in which 15 startups will be selected to participate in a virtual pitch competition that will be the opening event of this year’s TECHSHOW. In addition to the pitch competition, the 15 finalists will be highlighted on a special Startup Alley section of the conference website. 

Again this year, I will be coordinating the competition, in collaboration with the TECHSHOW board. Read on for full details. 

How Will The Startups Be Selected? 

The competition starts today. Startups interested in participating must complete this application form. Applications must be received by midnight Pacific Time on Friday, Dec. 18, 2020.

From all applications received, a panel of five judges will select 25 finalists. This year’s judges are:

• Allan MacKenzie, TECHSHOW 2021 co-chair.
• Roberta Tepper, TECHSHOW 2021 co-chair.
• Ivan Hemmans, TECHSHOW 2021 co-vice-chair.
• Brooke Moore, TECHSHOW 2021 co-vice-chair.
• Bob Ambrogi, Startup Alley organizer. 

On Jan. 4, 2021, brief descriptions of each of the 25 finalists will be posted on the ABA TECHSHOW blog, Above the Law, and LawSites, and readers will be invited to vote for their favorites. The 15 startups with the most votes will be selected for Startup Alley. Winners will be announced on Jan. 25. 

What Are The Criteria For Applying?

The competition is limited to startups that meet the following criteria:

• Your product or service is targeted to lawyers or legal professionals, not to consumers.
• Your company has never before exhibited at a national legal technology conference.
• Your company has achieved some demonstrable traction, either in users or financing.
• You were not one of the prior years’ winners selected to present at TECHSHOW in the 2017, 2018, 2019 or 2020 Startup Alley.

In addition, your company should be innovative, meaning that it addresses a need not met by other products or services currently on the market or that it does so in a way not currently done by others.

What Happens If My Company Is Selected?

The 15 winning finalists will face off in a virtual pitch competition on March 8, 2021, that will be the opening event for TECHSHOW 2021. Each startup will have 2.5 minutes to present its pitch in front of a virtual audience of TECHSHOW attendees. At the conclusion of the pitches, attendees will vote to select the most innovative company as the winner.

For this year’s competition, participants will be required to pre-record their 2.5 minute presentations. One person from each startup will also be allowed to present 30 seconds of live remarks. 

In addition to the pitch competition, the 15 finalists will be highlighted on a special Startup Alley section of the conference website. 

What Do I Get Out Of This? 

ABA TECHSHOW is one of the world’s pre-eminent legal technology conferences. All of the participants gain exposure to a large and diverse audience of legal professionals, including practitioners, academics, consultants and others. In addition, TECHSHOW’s audience includes legal journalists, bloggers, industry analysts and investors.

In addition, the winner of the opening night pitch competition will receive:

• Free 10×10 booth space at the 2022 TECHSHOW (or online equivalent if a live event is not possible).
• Free 12-month listing on the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center’s Buyer’s Guide.
• $5,000 credit to use toward advertising in ABA Law Practice Division media.
• A profile of the company on my LawSites blog.

There is no cost to apply and the application form is relatively painless to complete. We look forward to reading your submission.

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Robert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

Emily Murphy spent most of her tenure with the administration protecting Donald Trump’s financial holdings with bureaucratic shenanigans that landed her in a few congressional inquiries but mostly allowed her to operate in relative obscurity. That all changed when Murphy burst into the spotlight last week as the government official responsible for authorize the transition to the Biden administration, a task that she cynically and improperly refused to perform.

If seems as though she failed to fully appreciate the notoriety that comes with holding up a pandemic response during a national catastrophe. Because Murphy reportedly started the process of getting her resume out there for when her job ends in a couple of months, all while pretending her job is going to last another four years.

From ABC:

Emily Murphy, head of the GSA, recently sent that message to an associate inquiring about employment opportunities in 2021, a move that some in Washington interpreted as at least tacitly acknowledging that the current administration soon will be gone.

Looking for a job while acting as the public face of “we don’t need new jobs”… bravo. ABC secured a statement from GSA denying that Murphy was actually looking for work in one breath before explaining that it wouldn’t necessarily mean that Murphy expected her job to be over even if she were looking.

Honestly, when this administration is over it’s the blatant incompetence that will stick with me. The “gang that can’t shoot straight” approach to government was truly a sight to behold.

Maybe she can get a job with Jones Day… because they may have some high-profile openings before this is all said and done.

GSA official blocking Biden’s transition appears to privately plan post-Trump career [ABC News]

Earlier: The T14 GOP Lawyer Single-Handedly Holding Up The Joe Biden Transition

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force a large portion of the workforce to work from home for the foreseeable future, and retail spaces are under pressure due to weakened demand, the real estate market continues to bear the brunt of this drastic acceleration in remote working and e-commerce, creating uncertainty and risk for 2021.

Attend this webinar on November 18th at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT and learn from two real estate experts who will share their perspectives on how the pandemic is accelerating real estate trends and how to prepare to respond to these trends.

You will discover:

• How real estate trends will impact 2021
• Various approaches to consider when responding to current challenges
• Actions to take in Q4 to get ahead of these trends

Panelists:
Dustin Sarnoski, Global Head of Real Estate, State Street
John Skowronski, Real Estate Lawyer, Axiom
Sara Morgan, Vice President of Sales, Financial Services, Axiom

By submitting the form below, you are opting in to receive communication from Above the Law and its partners.

On Friday, University of Miami Law professor Daniel Ravicher tweeted out an allegation that he’d been fired because he “refuse[d] to censor [his] speech and apologize.”

But, in a statement to Law.com the law school dean disputed that Ravicher had been fired:

“Professor Daniel Ravicher, a lecturer at the School of Law, has not been terminated, nor has he been removed from his course. We are not sure why he is saying or suggesting otherwise,” [Dean Anthony E. Varona] said in a statement.

So, what exactly is going on? Well, let’s back up a bit. Like so many things recently, it goes back to the election. Ravicher made several dubious claims over Twitter about election fraud and… well a lot of stuff. As faculty members said in a letter regarding Ravicher’s tweets, published in The Miami Hurricane:

On his Twitter account, Ravicher has promoted baseless claims about fraud in the presidential election, suggested a need to use lethal force against protesters after the election, compared calls for political accountability to the Holocaust, groundlessly accused law faculty of retaliating against students for their political views and made several uninformed claims about race, ethnicity and identity in the United States.

And those “uninformed claims about race, ethnicity and identity in the United States”?

And then there was this doozy:

Yikes town. As the faculty letter goes on to note, they’re calling out what is — at a minimum — a serious lack of judgment:

These public social media posts demonstrate, at the very least, an egregious lack of professional judgment. While Ravicher’s unprofessional behavior may be defended as a matter of academic freedom or free speech, academic and free speech norms do not insulate lawyers from critique. To the contrary, the principles of academic freedom and free speech compel us to speak out against Ravicher’s promotion of disinformation, invocation of violence and racially derogatory commentary. We join the students, alumni and practicing attorneys voicing concern that these statements potentially reflect deeper failings.

And students are upset that a professor said such things. As third-year law student Christian Pasciak told the Miami Hurricane:

“We cannot seek to silence everyone just because we disagree with them. That said, our professors are leaders who set the standard for our students,” Pasciak told The Hurricane. “If our law school’s goal is to truly be inclusive and to make students feel comfortable, how can we continue to write checks to a professor who thinks that all Black people are simply people who allow themselves to be victimized, as the professor’s tweets say.”

Pasciak added this type of sentiment towards the Black community stems back to Reconstruction after the civil war in an effort to disenfranchise newly freed slaves. Thus, he said this type of speech is “downright reprehensible.”

Ravicher told Law.com that as a result of the controversy, he had a call with Dean Varona and says he was told his contract wouldn’t be renewed if he didn’t stop the tweets and issue an apology. He also sticks by the line that he’s been fired:

Ravicher said he disputes the notion that he hasn’t been fired. “[That I’ve been fired] might not be true, technically speaking,” he said. “But when someone says you’re not going to be renewed and something might happen sooner, to me that’s being fired. What I’m trying to say is I’m quitting by refusing to do what they want.”

But, as lawyers know, technical differences are STILL DIFFERENCES, and those can and do translate into vastly difference legal remedies. However, that doesn’t get your story picked up by Laura Ingraham. There’s a whole cottage industry of right-wing talking heads weaponizing the First Amendment and complaining about how they’ve been silenced. Looks like that’s Ravicher’s plan after he’s “fired.”

Oh, no, he has another employment plan. He should ask Jones Day how that’s going.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

As if 2020 could not be more of a “hitshow” with COVID-19, who would have thought that this election season would still be happening. Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you may rest, it is indisputable that this year’s presidential election has been anything but normal. One of the more disturbing assertions appears to involve the voting machines and software used in a number of states, including in a number of battleground states currently being disputed by President Donald Trump and his legal team. This has resulted in some reporting in the media on alleged “intellectual property” roadblocks involving election systems and other narratives that tend to confuse rather than clarify the situation. You probably have your own thoughts regarding alleged impediments to fair vote tallies involving certain voting systems used during the 2020 presidential election, but intellectual property should not be one of them.

In the interests of full disclosure, I do not have any inside knowledge on the architecture of many of these voting systems (including but not limited to Dominion Voting Systems election management system that is the center of a great deal of attention), but I do have a lot of experience in software development and distribution that I have accumulated over 25-plus years of legal practice. This experience includes copyright protection for software, navigating confidential information and trade secret protections, and a ton of licensing. Although there are many different ways to structure software and platform licenses, certain elements are common to all such agreements that can be leveraged to support the legitimacy of these systems and their software.

First and foremost, software can be protected in a number of different ways but is always subject to copyright protection at a minimum. Under 17 U.S.C. 102, all “original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device” qualify as copyrightable subject matter. Computer software is most commonly viewed as literary work (as defined under 17 U.S.C. Section 101) and, therefore, protected under copyright once “saved” to disk (or other storage medium). The copyright owner thus enjoys certain exclusive rights in and to the software under copyright law, and can choose how and to what extent to license its rights to its customers. Registering the software provides additional protections to the copyright owner, such as providing standing to sue for infringement (under the Fourth Estate case from SCOTUS), obtaining statutory damages for infringement and even attorney’s fees. When combined with hardware platforms (which may be protected under patents and trade secrets as well as copyrights), it’s not hard to acknowledge that the attendant intellectual property licensing can get complicated.

The point here is that the copyright owner does indeed have control over its copyrights and other intellectual property covering the software and attendant hardware platform, but must weigh those rights against the needs of the marketplace if the owner wants to commercialize the product. Products may have software embedded as part of the system; others use software-as-a-service models for customer access over the internet. For voting systems, the former is the preferred method given the significant need for voting security. What I have seen reported regarding these systems, however, has implied that the underlying licenses may prevent full transparency in verifying the code to prevent fraud at the software and system level. That may or may not be the case depending upon the license at issue, but here a few considerations to keep in mind to set the record straight for future elections:

• Standard Intellectual Property License Restrictions Need Not Be Impediments To Investigating Fraud. Software licenses (as well as platform agreements) tend to place not only restrictions on use, but prohibitions on reverse engineering and decompiling software. This is commonly done to protect the codebase — most customers do not require the source code to the software product, as the licensor handles internal software support. That said, voting systems present a different set of considerations given the nature of the product. Based upon my experience, states should negotiate source code escrow provisions that include allegations of improper operation of the software as a triggering event so as to authorize the release of source code to a mutually agreed forensic programmer to perform necessary auditing under strict confidentiality restrictions. Voting platform providers may resist this move, but it protects the codebase while permitting legitimate review.
• Confidentiality Restrictions Should Not Restrict Legitimate Review. Confidentiality restrictions are a common element of software licenses — similar to the foregoing, they are designed to prevent unauthorized disclosure of confidential elements of the software and/or system. Unfortunately, they can be tied to termination provisions permitting immediate termination of the license for breach, as well as exclusions from indemnification protections and limitations of licensor liability. States should insist upon a separate NDA that contains not only standard confidential information exclusions, but comprehensive authorizations to accommodate judicial orders, valid government subpoenas, and legitimate governmental audit requests. In this way, federal and/or state electoral agencies can seek information without the danger of material breach.
• Data Security Can Be Used to Ensure Appropriate Access. Without question, the information compiled by voting machine vendors for elections contains not only public information (like your name and address), but highly personal information (like how you voted). Such information would, by necessity, need to be maintained for audit purposes for an election. States should not simply rely upon standard vendor security representations or references to compliance with voluntary “standards” — they should insist upon stringent data handling requirements that include comprehensive audit provisions so as to ensure appropriate access, review, and verification.

Of course, these are not comprehensive points but illustrative of some steps that can (and should) be taken to protect the vote of all citizens. You may or may not agree with the complaints being lodged against voting machine systems used in this election, but it is nonsensical to argue against mechanisms that should be in place to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised. Frankly, such companies should accept these requirements as necessary to participating in the voting tabulation process for elections. Otherwise, the perception will be that they have something to hide beyond their intellectual property, and that is something that should be unacceptable to everyone.

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Tom Kulik is an Intellectual Property & Information Technology Partner at the Dallas-based law firm of Scheef & Stone, LLP. In private practice for over 20 years, Tom is a sought-after technology lawyer who uses his industry experience as a former computer systems engineer to creatively counsel and help his clients navigate the complexities of law and technology in their business. News outlets reach out to Tom for his insight, and he has been quoted by national media organizations. Get in touch with Tom on Twitter (@LegalIntangibls) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/technologylawyer), or contact him directly at tom.kulik@solidcounsel.com.

If you are not on your own legal path, at best you will be in someone else’s footsteps and at worst, you may never reach your destination.

In someone else’s footsteps, you cannot innovate, only imitate; you cannot truly lead, only enthusiastically follow; you cannot fulfill yourself, you can only fill their shoes. You never have to follow the thousand-year path; only do so if it serves you. If it does not serve you, you will find yourself subservient to it.

As a first-year law student, there was a lot of pressure to comply with the traditional path. In the highly esteemed, yet competitive, field, there seem to always be “strongly suggested” activities which just put unnecessary pressure on students — particularly first years.

I remember quite well when I was approached to do editing for the law review. At first, they simply invited me on, to which I politely responded, “editing is not my virtue.” Then they played a hedonistic — AKA pleasure-centered — angle and tried to convince me it would be fun. I laughed a little at that and told them that Bluebook Parties are no fun, they’re an oxymoron.

But still, they appealed my decision and tried to tug on my pride by calling it prestigious. Their appeal had taken this conversation to a higher court, and with the game getting more intense — which is a polite way to say less interesting but more amusing — I decided to bring out the big guns. I employed Sarcasm to make my case — and I have to say, I think she did a pretty good job. She sauntered out and said, “Winning a national Spelling Bee is prestigious. My life has been complete without it.”

And just like that, with only one statement, she made that line of argument redundant — making it a moot point, in a moot court case. But the opposition was not done. Before Sarcasm could even sit back down, they blurted out another line of reasoning — claiming it would help me get a job. Sarcasm merely snickered, glanced over her shoulder and said that anyone who wants to hire me because of my Bluebook mastery should consider another candidate.

And that was it. Motion denied, case closed. Judgment passed. From the third year who now looked down on me, that is. In their parting comments, they threw a Hail Mary and remarked that it was a good contribution to legal scholarship, but I told them I’d rather be the one writing law review articles — which I did end up doing four times as a law student.

All that is to say, you do not have to follow conventions. Not for a good education, nor for a good job, nor for anything else. Granted, there are certain rules you’ll have to follow, for example, you cannot practice law if you haven’t passed the state bar (not yet at least!). But outside of the major requirements, there are a plethora of nuances to be explored. Both while studying law and outside of it.

Beware, the thousand-year-old path always leads to the same place. As, well-known author James Clear said, “The direction was planned. The path was serendipitous.”

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

Attorney Linda A. Kerns, a Family Law practitioner and FedSoc contributor from Philadelphia is doing her best to undermine democratic institutions — or at least to rack up billables for this lost cause — on behalf of the Trump campaign and she’s not happy that she’s getting flack from other lawyers for doing it. Specifically, Kerns is upset that a Kirkland & Ellis associate called her and left a message that “speaks for itself and by any measure falls afoul of standards of professional conduct,” though Kerns is unwilling to actually detail any of it in the filing. Now Kerns wants the court to sanction Kirkland:

It is sad that we currently reside in a world where abuse and harassment are the costs of taking on a representation unpopular with some. It is sanctionable when that abuse and harassment comes from an elite law firm representing the Secretary of State.

Kerns would very much like to speak with the manager.

As it turns out, the actual “manager” at Kirkland dug into the matter and found out that the call came from “an associate from Kirkland & Ellis who is not part of the Firm’s litigation group, has never worked on this case, and was not aware of Kirkland’s role in the case.” Most likely, this call was prompted by the work of advocacy groups — like the Lincoln Project — urging people to call Trump’s lawyers of record to express disappointment in the ongoing pursuit of frivolous or right-up-to-the-line of frivolous lawsuits aimed at disenfranchising the people who appear to have handily own the election for Joe Biden. To that end, the Kerns motion exists mostly to chill speech from fellow attorneys by forcing them to worry that expressing their professional disappointment might land them in an internal firm conflict. As she puts it in her Reply brief:

In general, every lawyer at a firm is counsel to every client of that firm. That bedrock principle of the Rules is supposed to ennoble the profession and humble its practitioners. Yet one of the world’s largest law firms thinks its very size excuses the conduct of one of its lawyers. But size is not a defense.

There are a lot of contexts where this standard makes sense, but this is none of them. Representing an adverse party is not something the firm can shrug off. That a lawyer wholly separate from a matter expresses personal opinions on it is not.

Kirkland also challenged the idea that this voicemail was “absuive” and pledged to hand over a transcript. Wait, are they suggesting that Kerns is blowing this out of proportion in an effort to extract a petty pound of flesh from a Biglaw firm? Either by securing sanctions or posturing herself as a martyr when the judge rolls his eyes and denies the motion. No one would be that hyperbolically cynical, would they?

But if there needs to be a rule saying that Kirkland & Ellis associates should not call opposing counsel and leave an abusive voicemail then all hope is lost.

Oh, no, apparently some people would.

(Filings on the next page…)

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Holiday downtime is approaching as is the new year, so it’s a perfect time to reflect on your progress (or lack thereof) of going paperless.

In this webinar, we will explore paperless office fundamentals such as sharing files with clients in a secure manner, using e-signature, and automating document production.
You’ll develop a plan to turn ideas into action and make sure your firm is on the way to increasing efficiencies and eliminating waste.

Join Larry Port, CEO of Rocket Matter and Adriana Linares, President of LawTech Partners on December 9th at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT to prepare your legal office for seamless automation.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the operational and time waste that can be eliminated by switching to a paperless workflow.
• See an alternative to a “client portal” – a much-requested but inefficient solution to information sharing.
• Come away with an actionable plan for embracing automatic document creation.
• Explore paperless invoicing and electronic payment options.

By filling out the form you’re you are opting in to receive communication from Above the Law and its Partners.

The NCAA Division I Council has submitted proposed amendments concerning college athletes’ right to commercially exploit their names, images, and likenesses, which will be voted on in January 2021.

I agree with Florida Representative Chip LaMarca, sponsor of the legislation that will make Florida the first state to independently provide athletes these very important rights, who tweeted, “Sadly, the NCAA failed again & the states must continue to pass #NIL laws until the Feds create a solution. @RepAGonzalez has the leadership and knowledge to get it done.” Representative LaMarca tagged U.S. Representative Anthony Gonzalez, who co-sponsored the Student Athlete Level Playing Field Act, which I believe is the most practical and realistic federal legislation focused on this issue.

What is so bad about the NCAA’s proposal? Here are three significant areas of weakness.

1. It is overbroad and provides schools too much power.

“An institution may prohibit a student-athlete’s involvement in name, image and likeness activities that conflict with existing institutional sponsorship arrangements,” states proposed NCAA Bylaw 12.5.3.1.3. It continues, “An institution, at its discretion, may prohibit a student-athlete’s involvement in name, image, and likeness activities based on other considerations, such as conflict with institutional values, as defined by the institution.”

This is the opposite of creating a free market where athletes are able to enter into endorsement deals and otherwise license their publicity rights to third parties for commercial gain. Instead, this particular provision essentially allows a university to pick and choose when it wishes to subjectively prohibit a player from entering into a deal. “Institutional values” are to be defined by the institution and, without a set of objective values that do not shift on a case-by-case basis, there should be a fear of the values changing whenever it suits the university.

2. It improperly tries to shield athletics departments from losing deals.

The second sentence of the newly proposed NCAA Bylaw 12.5.3.1.2 says, “a student-athlete’s name, image or likeness may not be used by an athletics equipment company or manufacturer to publicize the institution’s athletics program uses its equipment.” This is entirely inequitable.

For instance, a football player at the University of Florida would likely not be permitted to enter into his own economic relationship with Jordan Brand, because the team is already sponsored by the company and a relationship between the player and brand could be construed as one where the brand is publicizing that the school uses the equipment. Meanwhile, nothing prevents Nike, the official sponsor of the National Football League, from entering into separate arrangements with individual players for the promotion of the brand and so that the brand can use those players’ publicity rights. Furthermore, nothing prevents the school from allowing the brand to publicize that the players use the equipment on the field.

This provision seems to be intended to protect universities from losing valuable partnerships based on a theory that the brands will choose to dedicate their resources to individual players as opposed to the entire athletic department. It is a flawed theory and, even if true, improperly denies college athletes from truly being able to exploit their publicity rights.

3. It plays favorites with institutions over athletes.

Proposed NCAA Bylaw 12.5.3.1.2 begins by stating, “A student-athlete shall not engage in name, image and likeness activities involving a commercial product or service that conflicts with NCAA legislation (e.g., sports wagering, banned substances).”

I can accept college athletes being prohibited from affiliating with certain industries, but I cannot comprehend why the NCAA would ban athletes from involvement with those brands while allowing member institutions to earn money from those types of relationships. For instance, why should a college athlete be restricted from entering into a publicity rights arrangement with a sports wagering company when the University of Colorado is earning a minimum of $1.625 million from a five-year deal with sports gambling company PointsBet? Why should a college athlete be told he cannot license his name to a liquor brand when New Mexico State is not prohibited from doing a licensing deal to create a “Pistol Pete” whiskey?

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Darren Heitner is the founder of Heitner Legal. He is the author of How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know, published by the American Bar Association, and is an adjunct professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. You can reach him by email at heitner@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @DarrenHeitner.