W. Stuart Dornette, co-chair of the litigation exercise at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, flew to Los Angeles from Cincinnati on Thursday to get in Tremendous Bowl LVI.
But Dornette didn’t fly commercial from Cincinnati. He and a number of legislation organization colleagues took just one of a several flights chartered by the Nationwide Soccer League’s Cincinnati Bengals, who are established to enjoy the Los Angeles Rams in Sunday’s big video game.
“They offered every single staff a pair of tickets, transportation, and lodging,” claimed Dornette, a veteran demo attorney who known as the event a memorable moment in the 45 a long time he’s been a essential legal adviser to the Bengals. Yet another Taft attorney did the incorporation files for the crew in 1967, Dornette explained, a yr in advance of the club took the area.
The franchise is owned by Mike Brown, a Harvard Legislation University graduate who inherited the franchise from his father, Hall of Fame football coach Paul Brown. Mike Brown’s daughter, Katherine Blackburn, is an govt vice president for the Bengals who begun her vocation as a company affiliate at Taft, where she satisfied her partner, fellow lawyer and present Bengals vice president Troy Blackburn.
Dornette and his spouse were being in Miami some 33 decades ago when the Bengals made their very last Tremendous Bowl visual appeal, a 20-16 loss to the San Francisco 49ers. The staff, now led by star quarterback Joe Burrow, are regarded as underdogs as they prepare to consider on the Rams in the team’s home stadium.
Cincinnati, contrary to other NFL groups, does not list a typical counsel between its front business staff on the team’s internet site.
“We do a whole lot of legal operate for the team in distinct areas,” Dornette stated, when questioned if he effectively serves in as the Bengals’ best attorney.
That features accomplishing sponsorship agreements, workers’ payment and pension issues, as well as contracts with suppliers and prospects, he reported. Participant contracts are ruled by the NFL’s collective bargaining settlement, lessening the want for outdoors counsel, Dornette mentioned. He managed construction, advancement, funding, and leasing work for Paul Brown Stadium, the Bengals’ household field considering the fact that 2000.
Taft, a Cincinnati-based agency that in the latest several years has expanded throughout the Midwest, is closing in on cracking the leading 100 law companies in the U.S. by gross revenue. Taft acquired Minneapolis-centered Briggs and Morgan in 2020, a move that brought the firm sports activities customers like Important League Baseball’s Minnesota Twins and the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, Dornette explained.
“We have a relatively robust team of people carrying out sports stuff,” said Dornette. Other Taft sporting clients involve the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts and Cleveland Browns, as properly as the Nationwide Basketball Association’s Cleveland Cavaliers.
Dornette stated he and the other Taft people headed to the Super Bowl acquired their tickets by the Bengals. The Taft husband or wife is optimistic about the teams’ likelihood in the significant sport. Equally groups lie at to some degree reverse finishes of the NFL spectrum, in phrases of the dimensions of their residence cities and the usually means via which they built their championship-amount rosters.
Todd Davis, a longtime vice president of legal affairs for the Rams, didn’t answer to a ask for for remark about his team’s authorized advisers. Nor did Marlene Nations, a former Dentons true estate associate who advised the franchise on the January 2016 offer that permitted the Rams to leave St. Louis and return to the Los Angeles spot. The Rams experienced earlier moved to St. Louis from Anaheim, Calif., in 1995.
Nations is now common counsel for Hollywood Park Administration Co. LLC, an Inglewood, Calif.-centered progress whose roster of houses involves SoFi Stadium, a $5.5 billion edifice that opened in 2020 and is the web page of Sunday’s Super Bowl.