Day-to-Day Advice

As well as requiring specialist sports advice, sports clubs are also subject to all the usual daily requirements of the law like any other business.

Our clients come to us because we offer a complete legal advice service for sports clubs. Many of our Sports Team are experts in their own fields, providing advice to sports clubs and other clients alike on day-to-day legal issues, from commercial contracts to complex employment matters:

• Commercial – our Commercial Group is one of the largest commercial law teams outside London and with our unique blend of technical and commercial skills, we’re proud to be known as a formidable legal resource. We know your business relies upon its contracts: with suppliers, customers, distributors, agents, logistics providers, partners and service providers. We want to help you get those contracts right and we’ll find a way that works for you – whether that’s a lengthy negotiated legal text, or something much shorter – we’re built to be flexible and we’ll work with you to find the approach that most suits your needs.

• Dispute Resolution – we’re one of the largest and most successful Litigation & Dispute Resolution teams outside London. We help our clients to avoid disputes becoming litigious wherever we can. Right from the very start we‘ll work with you to develop a clear strategy, as well as identifying and analysing any risk.  Our role is to optimise any pressure points and find opportunities to resolve the dispute. We make decisions based on the outcome you need and we don’t lose sight of cost.  We’re mindful of early dispute resolution and we’re fortunate to have accredited mediators in our team.

• Employment & Immigration – we provide complex employment legal advice to private and listed companies, as well as advising and representing a number of charitable trusts and sports foundations. We help our clients by assessing risks and advising on redundancy processes, TUPE, sales, shared services, insolvency, as well as the day-to-day issues that can arise in your workforce. We also have a wealth of experience drafting the full range of personnel contracts to suit the needs of all businesses and advising on business immigration and sponsorship.

We also work in collaboration with colleagues around the firm to ensure you get the specialist advice you need on all other areas of the law, including:

• Intellectual Property, Trade Marks and Design – we’re an award-winning team which offers specialist advice across the full spectrum of intellectual property law. We provide our clients with a ‘one stop shop’ for all intellectual property matters, supporting you throughout the whole intellectual property life cycle, from development, through to marketing, commercialising, protection and enforcement.

• Real Estate – our knowledge of real estate law, combined with our day-to-day involvement with the market means we can help you identify the important issues and provide sophisticated advice that will help you achieve your goals and maximise the value of your transactions.

• Regulatory and Compliance – our Regulatory & Compliance experts have a great deal of experience advising clients on how to stay on the right side of the rules, from data protection law to health and safety. But if things do go wrong, we can help.  We have decades of experience in a huge array of regulatory compliance investigations, as well as defending civil and criminal proceedings brought by the authorities.  This includes the police, the Information Commissioner’s Office, Serious Fraud Office, HM Revenue and Customs, the Health and Safety Executive, Environment Agency, Food Standards Agency, Trading Standards and the Financial Conduct Authority.

• Technology and Digital – acting for suppliers and customers throughout the sector, we advise on the full range of legal issues that clients might encounter when developing, implementing or operating technically innovative services, products or artificial intelligence. We provide easy to digest advice, covering contract and licence work, as well as intellectual property, data, payment platforms, competition, corporate and regulatory issues.