The Am Law Daily reported last month that tax filings made by the National Football League and its collective bargaining arm, the NFL Management Council, show that NFL paid its outside lawyers at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Covington & Burling, and Proskauer Rose a combined total of at least $15 million in fiscal 2011—a 12-month span that saw the NFL wage a collective bargaining battle with the union representing players.
At the time, we could not compare the NFL Players Association’s legal spending for the same period—April 1, 2011, through March 31, 2012—because the relevant union tax filing was not publicly available. In fact, there was speculation that the tax filing—as well as a separate filing required by the U.S. Departmet of Labor covering the period in question—would never materialize given the NFLPA’s decision to disband briefly prior to filing an antitrust suit against management amid the lengthy lockout that preceded the completion of a new labor pact in July 2011.
This week, however, The Am Law Daily obtained copies of the two union filings, which contain detailed information about the NFLPA’s spending on in-house and outside counsel during the collective bargaining standoff. (The union’s Form 990 tax filing covers the period from March 1, 2011, through February 29, 2012. Its LM-2 filing meanwhile, covers the period from July 26, 2011, through February 29, 2012, when the the NFLPA’s rank and file voted to decertify the union.)
The NFLPA’s tax filing shows that all of the union’s top five expenditures on outside independent contractors went to law firms. Leading the way, with nearly $6.1 million in fees earned for serving as the NFLPA’s lead antitrust and outside counsel: Dewey & LeBoeuf, the now-defunct firm whose former global litigation chair Jeffrey Kessler—now with Winston & Strawn, where he heads the antitrust practice and cochairs of the sports law group—played a major role in the labor negotiations.
