Sports is big business. By the middle part of the last decades, estimates for the total value of the sports industry in the United States ranged from over $40 billion per year to over $70 billion per year.A typical NFL franchise may now be worth more than $1 billion; a typical MLB franchise $523 million, and even a "lowly" NHL franchise as much as $240 million. Individual athletes and coaches earn multi-million salaries and similar levels of compensation for endorsement deals. College sports conferences have multi-billion television contracts and the NCAA spends nearly three quarters of a billion dollars a year. Any time lots of money flows into an industry, the need for talented and effective legal representation intensifies.Sports lawyers advise leagues and teams on a host of legal and compliance issues. Sports lawyers help professional athletes negotiate contracts with teams and develop wealth management and estate planning strategies suitable for each athlete's circumstances. Sports lawyers, working as NCAA and Title IX compliance officers at colleges and universities, help navigate an increasingly complex array of rules and an evolving NCAA enforcement process and counsel schools on the federal laws and regulations governing gender discrimination in educational funding. Sports lawyers litigate cases – a number of which have gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – in a range of disputes involving athletes, leagues, and teams. Sports law jobs aren't just appealing because of the money involved in the industry at all levels.Sport is an essential part of the fabric of modern American society.To paraphrase Liverpool Manager Bill Shankly, sports aren't "a matter of life and death" – they are "much, much more important than that."With the stakes seemingly higher than life and death, the lawyer is, as President Lincoln said, a "peacemaker" with a "superior opportunity of being a good" person. Lawyers help athletes, coaches, leagues and teams use the tools of wisdom and reason to resolve disputes that tug at the hearts of those involved.In this sense, sports lawyers can help fulfill the highest aspirations of our profession. This book conducts a thorough, thoughtful investigation of what options may exist and what kinds of steps are needed to maximize one's chances of netting a coveted sports law job.