Wilkinson Stekloff Partner Rakesh Kilaru has received no shortage of recognition recently, including last year being named a Law360 Sports & Betting MVP and sharing the National Law Journal’s Winning Litigators Award with Founding Partner Beth Wilkinson based on major victories for the NFL and Microsoft. This year he has secured a position alongside Beth on the inaugural list of Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Global Entertainment, Sports & Media Lawyers, a guide that honors attorneys who accumulate wins for lucrative clients across these high-visibility industries through rigorous journalistic research.
Rakesh’s latest achievement: obtaining final approval of the groundbreaking $2.8 billion settlement for the NCAA in their name, image, and likeness (NIL) litigation on June 6, 2025. The settlement is widely expected to change the landscape of collegiate athletics, allowing schools for the first time to directly compensate students for their athletic participation, and resolving antitrust claims brought by multiple plaintiff classes of current and former student-athletes against the NCAA and major athletic conferences.
Rakesh emerged as the lead voice for the defense during the lengthy, delicate negotiation process that led to the settlement agreement. And he continued that lead role throughout the equally prolonged and complex approval process, as the sole defense counsel who argued in multiple hearings before a federal judge in the Northern District of California.
As one of the most consequential resolutions in the history of sports, the settlement has received extensive coverage from sports and major media outlets alike. In the weeks since final approval was granted, Rakesh has been a frequently featured voice in the reporting, providing dependable commentary to journalists. He spoke with Ben Portnoy from the Sports Business Journal, championing the settlement as “a better system that [he’s] optimistic is going to work.” But he cautioned there would be “an adjustment period where schools have to feel good about the rules being enforced . . . a point of tension in the last few years.”
In speaking with CBS Sports about the settlement’s latest hurdle—an appeal on Title XI grounds—Rakesh “expressed optimism that the settlement will ultimately be upheld. ‘Judge Wilken wrote a really thorough order. [S]he addressed all the issues really persuasively [and] she gets a lot of deference in the decision she made.’” He explained to the Associated Press that “it’s very common for damages to be delayed in this way” but “we are going to push . . . because every day the appeal goes on is a day damages don’t go to the student-athletes.”
Amidst the uncertainty during this process, it is indisputable that Rakesh has cemented his place among elite sports and entertainment lawyers. And he continues to bring unparalleled value to his clients, validating Microsoft’s trial victory defending its $69 billion acquisition of Activision with a recent unanimous affirmance from the Ninth Circuit, and continuing to lead the NCAA’s defense in related high-profile NIL cases, having already secured dismissal of a sprawling federal class action filed on behalf of all student-athletes who competed before 2016, seeking damages for compensation rules then in effect.