First off, thank you all for the kind comments. It was a lot of work and I'm really glad you're enjoying it. Sorry for the poor English in the OP as I was compiling it when I should have been paying attention in Trusts, but you know, priorities. (Sadly, Burke's spot had to end though he was willing to keep answering questions because Trusts was happening in the same room. Burke joked that since it was Trusts, he should definitely keep going, and that when he was in law school they called "wills and trusts" "stiffs and gifts".)
I had a couple of questions in this thread and via PM that I'll address. These are not Flames-related per se and have more to do with the legal profession and legal work within pro sports.
First off, I had a question via PM about legal jobs in pro sports in general.
Burke noted that there are two sides to the pro sports industry. There's what he called the "talent side" and then what he called alternately "the business side" and "everything else". The talent side is hockey ops, player agent-type stuff. This is Jay Feaster, Brian Burke, Pat Morris, Don Meehan, etc.
Burke said the talent side is extremely difficult to get into. In addition, it's extremely volatile, very risky, and very hard to carve out a career in. It is the very opposite of stable. He mentioned he's lived in numerous different cities, has held numerous different jobs over the last 25 years, and been fired and out of work many times.
On the other hand, the "business side" is much larger and far more stable. He said there is a hidden, or at least far less visible, side of the business that requires lawyers. He noted that there is a banking industry devoted to pro sports teams, there are firms whose entire business model is selling sports teams, there are in-house legal teams (Burke noted that the Flames are the only NHL team without an in-house legal department, which I found very interesting), and there are lots of jobs with the NHL itself in the legal department.
Burke said that a job in the pro sports industry (and I think he was referring to the talent side here) is extremely statistically unlikely. He said that out of his Harvard class of 1500-1600 law students, there were two in pro sports -- he and someone in the NFL. He said this is probably statistically average for lawyers.
However I think this needs to be "read together" with his comments that you have one life to live, it's not a dress rehearsal, and you had better try to get what you want out of this life because there isn't another go-around. That, and that you have to work your ass off to get anywhere special.
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Originally Posted by J epworth kendal
Thanks a lot for this post. My girlfriend is currently in law school with the aspirations of a job in pro sports as a lawyer. I'm sure most the stuff Burke said she's already heard in her sports law class, but wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on this, and anything else he said about how women should "break the last barrier" on sports teams.
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Hopefully some of the comments above help. His comments regarding women breaking the last barrier to get into the talent side of pro sports largely focussed around the myth that you have to have played at a high level to be able to evaluate professional athletes. He didn't delve that deeply into the topic as this sort of got him off track and he started talking about scouting, but I will infer a few things based on the overall impression I got from his talk.
Earlier, he briefly mentioned the You Can Play program (which I forgot to bring up, sorry about that) and talked about the need to get rid of the homophobic atmosphere of pro sports dressing rooms. I think it's fair to say that Burke feels the talent side of pro sports work is also an old boys club and will be difficult to break into as a woman for the same reason that gay boys stop playing pro sports once they reach a certain age. That is, that pro sports is a "man's man" game, which leads to sexism and homophobia (which is really unfortunate, men, we can be better than that). He did note that this is changing, very slowly.
He also mentioned that he thought women had broken down "all barriers" except this one, which I found interesting, given that many professions, notably the legal profession, have a long way to go to attain gender equality. While I think law firms are very image-conscious in their hiring policies and strive hard to hire equally, the fact remains that there are very few managing partners that are women and partners in law firms are still largely male. I think the biological fact that women need to take time off to give birth is part of the reason, and the perception that women will drop out of the work force for this reason makes up the rest of it. Further there's still a stigma against paternal leave in the legal community.
I should at this point say that this is from the perspective of a third-year law student and not a practicing lawyer, so take the appropriate number of grains of salt along with it.
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Originally Posted by Zarley
Fantastic summary, Five-hole. The more I hear from and read about Burke, the more convinced I am that we have the right guy in charge to build this team for the long term.
Without taking things too off topic, I'd personally be interested in his insights into the law profession in general.
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After his hookers and lawyers joke, Burke noted that the profession has an obligation, and more importantly, individual lawyers should act in a way, to remove the negative stigma that lawyers have. He said that the profession has been amongst the most respected and revered since Roman times because of the invaluable service that it provides to the community. He said that the legal profession attracts the best and brightest society has to offer because of the prestige of the career, the monetary opportunity it affords, and because the work is very challenging. He challenged all of us to be good lawyers, to practice law ethically and with good business and personal acumen, and to give back to the community in the same way he asks his hockey players to give back.