Washington, D.C. – Law360 recently interviewed Partners Beth Wilkinson and Rakesh Kilaru in its feature highlighting Wilkinson Stekloff as a 2020 Sports and Betting Practice Group of the Year.
Law360 singled out Wilkinson Stekloff as “an important player in sports law, successfully defending major sports leagues in litigation and conducting misconduct investigations in both football and tennis.” Law360 focused its recognition on Wilkinson Stekloff’s work representing the NFL in an antitrust dispute over the NFL Sunday Ticket product broadcast media rights, and the NCAA in multiple class actions over its rules regarding the compensation and benefits student-athletes can receive student-athlete image rights.
In the interview, Beth told Law360, “We have spectacular people who really want to be trial lawyers. There’s very few firms where people actually try cases, especially the sports cases we do. Many of them are complicated and high-stakes antitrust cases and that’s why sports leagues and teams come to us on a repeated basis to handle these huge matters.” Rakesh added that “It really is true that our whole firm is a sports practice.”
Rakesh also shared his perspective on litigating high-profile sports-cases where the underlying facts are familiar to judges and jurors: “It’s a challenge we have to deal with, but it’s something that keeps the cases interesting and fun, and there’s some advantages in speaking to an audience that has at least a basic familiarity with the facts instead of trying to build things from the ground up.”
Founded in February 2016, Wilkinson Stekloff has grown to nearly 40 lawyers and has quickly established itself as the leading trial boutique firm in the country. The firm has tried over a dozen cases to verdict across the country, winning the vast majority, and has won several other pre-trial victories in bet-the-company cases.
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