Jodi S. Balsam

Jodi S. Balsam is Professor of Clinical Law and Director of Externship Programs at Brooklyn Law School, where she teaches Sports Law, directs NYC’s only specialized sports law externship program, and serves as faculty advisor to the Brooklyn Entertainment and Sports Law Society and Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment Law Blog. She also teaches the Sports Law course at NYU School of Law, and has taught the subject at New York Law School, University of New Hampshire School of Law, Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany, and the MESGO Executive Masters Program in Global Sport Governance.  

Professor Balsam frequently writes and speaks on sports law topics, including as co-author of Weiler’s Sports and the Law, a leading law school casebook in the field. Her publications and presentations have addressed antitrust challenges to sports leagues and organizing bodies, sports trademarks, athletes’ rights of free expression and name/image/likeness exploitation, sports gambling and integrity, sports league governance, and the role of the sports agent. She is on the editorial boards of Law360-Sports & Betting, the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, and the international sports law blog LawInSport. She is a past-chair and current executive committee member of the Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Law and Sports.

Professor Balsam served on the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Independent Resolution Panel, hearing complex infractions cases that implicate college athletics’ core values. She is the on-air Legal Analyst for NBC Sports/The Golf Channel, and frequently appears in the media on legal issues in sports, including ESPN, MSNBC, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal.  

Before joining academia, Professor Balsam was the National Football League's Counsel for Operations and Litigation, where she managed litigation in all areas of law, oversaw a variety of policy and operational matters, negotiated and drafted contracts for League special events including the Super Bowl, and administered the League's internal dispute resolution processes and compliance program. Prior to the NFL she was a litigator with the New York office of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where she represented sports and entertainment clients in antitrust matters and complex commercial litigation. She served as a law clerk for Judge Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge Charles Brieant of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A graduate of Yale College, Professor Balsam received her law degree from NYU School of Law.