Fred Sperling, '79: Representing His Airness, Sports Lawyer Is Undefeated
For more than 25 years, Fred Sperling, ’79, has represented the person who earlier this year was reported by Forbes magazine to be the most marketable celebrity in the United States: Michael Jordan. Jordan, who enjoys a remarkable 98 percent awareness rating among consumers, will earn roughly 30 million dollars more this year than any other athlete, active or retired. He was referred to Sperling in 1989 by another well-known athlete, the Bears’ wide receiver Willie Gault, who liked the legal services Sperling had provided and appreciated that Sperling returned his phone calls promptly.
“I’m not a jock and I wasn’t practicing sports law,” Sperling recalls. “It all just came together from the cases I had handled and building relationships.” Today Sperling, who has been at Schiff Hardin since 1980, heads the firm’s sports, media, and entertainment group. In addition to many professional athletes and sports organizations, Sperling and his team have successfully represented Warner Brothers in several copyright and trademark cases and successfully defended media outlets against defamation claims, among other things. This year the group acquired a client whose worldwide fame might surpass even Jordan’s, the former soccer star Pelé.
Sperling has never lost a case he has handled for Jordan. The first of those cases was a breach of contract suit brought by a movie company, and among the more recent was a case alleging that a grocery-store chain had impermissibly used Jordan’s image in an advertisement. The latter case resulted in an 8.9-million-dollar award from a jury, after Sperling made the case that Jordan’s image was his most important financial asset. Jordan donated the award to charities. “Michael is a wonderful client,” Sperling says. “Every time he brings an issue to me he asks the same question first, and it’s a question that is not always foremost in every client’s mind: ‘What’s the right thing to do?’”
Doing the right thing is something Sperling admires about the place where he works. “Schiff Hardin has a long-time commitment to diversity,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons I came here in the first place. And the firm is also genuinely committed to supporting pro bono work—it lives by values that go beyond profit maximization.” Sperling’s own pro bono work has included extensive advocacy related to hate crimes, prisoners’ rights, and protections for asylum seekers.
Sperling’s father was an attorney. “He loved practicing law so much that he hummed while he was doing work he had brought home,” Sperling says. “I figured that must be a good profession, so I had law school in mind from a pretty young age.” While Sperling and his wife, Priscilla, ’79, lived in Chicago for a year after college graduation, she also decided that she would like to become a lawyer, and with some last-minute help from Dick Badger they became classmates. She was a partner at Mayer Brown before taking time off to be with their three children, and she is now of counsel at Mason, Wenk & Berman.
“My first exposure to the Law School was pretty shocking to me, coming from a very liberal background and encountering a faculty that had a strongly conservative element,” Sperling says. “But the result was very beneficial, causing me to examine my views more deeply and learn to defend them. Richard Posner and I had some pretty good verbal contests in class, but I learned a lot from him, as I did from so many other great professors, including Geof Stone and Gerhard Casper. When I clerked after graduation, I realized how strong my preparation had been, even compared to graduates of other top schools.”
“I’m fortunate to have many deeply fulfilling relationships in my life, not only with my wife and children but with colleagues and clients at Schiff Hardin,” he says. “Those have come to me at least in part as a result of the opportunities created by my education at the Law School.”