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the Center for Law, Technology and the Arts at CWRU. Nard’s experience in Intellectual Property and Carfagna’s experience in Sports Law complemented one another, and from their work together, the idea for an Academy emerged. When Carfagna began teaching his three courses to students from C|M|LAW and CWRU Law, it immediately became clear that students here in Cleveland were highly interested in them and their practical nature.
“These are skills-based, clinically-based courses,” says Carfagna. The skills that students learn are useful across industries, but they also address issues in sports that appear in the headlines today.
“Consider the scandal at Ohio State University, or at University of Miami (FL),” says Carfagna. “Our graduates will have the skills to assist an athletic director in interpreting and becoming compliant with NCAA regulations,” he says. With sports and entertainment crossing over more and more in venues like the Wolstein Center, students who are well-prepared to draft and manage event and venue related contracts will have an advantage. After teaching his courses in Cleveland for one year, Carfagna decided an immersion experience might be more beneficial to students. “Craig Nard had been doing immersion on the entertainment side with music and law,” says Carfagna, “and we talked about the possibility of putting our courses together.” The two felt that their courses combined would make a unique, practical, attractive package and their deans agreed. Carfagna and Nard became co-directors, and the Great Lakes Sports and Entertainment Law Academy was born. The pair looked to their successes with current students to guide the development of the program. “These are pre-professional, specialized courses that offer the platform for students to enter these industries as attorneys,” says Carfagna, “but the difficult question is, how can we make those opportunities available to them?” One of the top students who had already taken the cross-listed courses offered an answer. After shining in two of the three courses, Christopher Harrington, a student from ClevelandMarshall, had impressed Carfagna. When the opportunity arose for him to recommend students for an externship placement at The Madison Square Garden Company in New York City, he submitted Harrington’s name along with the names of several of his best Sports Law students. “As a result of my participation in Professor Carfagna’s courses, I managed to obtain the externship and transition quickly into my new position at MSG,” says Christopher Harrington. “When I arrived I was given contract reviewing, editing and drafting assignments. Because we had extensive practice with similar complex agreements, I recognized the various provisions and boilerplates,” he says. “I knew exactly what to do, and I was able to get started without asking many questions, which impressed my
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