Diarmuid Laffan

Diarmuid Laffan is a barrister at 4 New Square Chambers, specialising in commercial litigation, insurance, professional liability and sports law. As regards his sports practice, Diarmuid represents clients in both commercial disputes and regulatory/disciplinary matters and has appeared before various sports arbitral panels and the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne. Diarmuid is ranked as a Leading Junior in Sport by The Legal 500.

1. How did you find the transition from working in private practice at Freshfields to being self-employed as a barrister? 

It is over 10 years since I made that transition so it feels like a lifetime ago. The thing I missed most initially was consistently being part of a team. That is definitely something you can get at the Bar, especially when you are working intensively with your solicitors and any other members of the counsel team on a case that is close to trial. However that experience of being on a team is more occasional or episodic at the Bar, and you can have periods where you are pretty much left to your own devices doing written or advisory work. The big upside of the Bar is that you have a greater degree of control over your own practice and your time. There are pluses and minuses to both branches of the profession, but both are great careers in their own right.

2. How would you define “sports law”?  

There is wide spectrum of reasonable answers to this question, ranging from ‘there’s no such thing’ to ‘you know it when you see it’. The general consensus seems to be that anything with a vaguely sporting context can be referred to as sports law but if a football club has a contractual termination dispute with its caterer is that sports law? Or just contract law? Or catering law?
 
I think the core of what we generally understand as sports law is probably captured by both contentious and non-contentious work relating to the regulation of sport, as well as anti-doping and other disciplinary proceedings. 
 
Having said that when it comes to disputes and other work to do with the commercialisation of sport, whether centred on agency, licensing or any of the other various legal issues that sporting organisations and athletes can face, an understanding of the sport itself, the dynamics of its competitions and how it is organised and regulated is definitely helpful. Ultimately I do think that commercial disputes with a significant sporting context are properly regarded as sports law even if the exact boundary is hard to define. 

3. How did you start gaining instructions in sports law?  

My first sports cases were disciplinary cases that I took on pro bono for unrepresented athletes before the National Anti-Doping Panel. Sports Resolutions has a pro bono panel through which you can get that work and it is a great way to get a start in the discipline. If you do a good job you can start to get paid work from the governing bodies that you appeared against. 
 
After that I think it is the usual stuff when it comes to trying to get a certain type of work as a lawyer. There are internal facing and external facing elements. The internal part involves showing interest inside your organisation by showing up to the right committee meetings, agreeing to write articles or provide support in some other way to more senior employees / members of your Chambers… all of which signals internally that you are interested in that work. That means you get a name for doing it even if there is a strong element of faking it until you make it initially, then when the work is around people start to think about getting you involved.
 
There is then the external facing part of building and maintaining relationships with other people in the area, through industry events and other types of marketing. It takes a while but if you do those kinds of things you generally see gradual results over time. 

4. Are there any particular areas of sports law that interest you the most? 

I really enjoy disciplinary cases that have a strong factual focus. I am thinking specifically of a case I did that was to do with possession of a prohibited substance where the athlete disputed how the substance found its way into their bag, and the whereabouts cases I have done where the athletes were contesting findings that they had committed three violations of the WADA Code’s whereabouts framework.

Those cases are intensely factual and tend to turn on how the witnesses’ evidence stands up under cross-examination, and submissions about the facts where you are trying to convince the tribunal that your client’s case is the more realistic one based on the inherent probabilities. Cases that are so dependent on the witnesses and any available documents really bring a focus and a rigour to how you read the evidence and winning and losing can depend on small details. It is quite a fun exercise trying to find holes in the opponent’s case and arguments as to why your client’s account should be believed. 

5. Please can you describe an interesting case that you have been involved in? 

Probably the most interesting case I have been involved in is a dispute between a sports governing body and a commercial partner about a long-term licensing agreement. It is ongoing and the subject of confidential arbitration so I cannot say much about it save that it involves some interesting legal issues and witnesses.

6. What advice would you give to aspiring sports lawyers? 

I think the first thing is to decide whether you want to be a pure sports lawyer or a commercial or other type of lawyer for whom sports work is a part of their practice. For instance there are plenty of criminal lawyers who do some sports disciplinary work, or personal injury / clinical negligence lawyers who have a sub-specialism in field of play injuries.
 
There are specialist firms where you can do nothing but sports law and Chambers where you can build a practice that is largely based on sports work. However there are not many and there are plenty of excellent candidates who want to get jobs at those places so if that is the route you want to go down, be ready to put in a lot of hard, focussed work to get through a competitive recruitment environment. 

There are also plenty of firms and Chambers that have a sports group but a reasonable proportion of your work will be from some other area. Applying to this kind of organisation will widen out the potential pool of places where you can get a job, but you will also have to think about the other type or types of work you want to do. If you are at or before the stage of applying for jobs there is no substitute for getting inside the building via a vacation scheme or mini-pupillage and finding out exactly what kind of work a firm or set of Chambers actually does.

After that, see 3 above. Lots of people love sport and many of those people are lawyers who want to practice sports law! It is definitely possible to build a practice in the area but it takes time and you need to be prepared to work at it. 

7. Please can you describe a typical day in your life? 
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This is going to be boring! If I am not in court my typical day involves getting up reasonably early and doing some sort of exercise. After that I either take my life into my own hands and cycle to work or get a train to London Bridge and walk to Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. The latter wastes a bit of time but the walk along the South Bank is hard to beat. 
 
After that I am in Chambers for the day. Post-Covid people work from home more but there is usually someone around to grab lunch or a coffee with. I try to get to the bottom of my to-do list every day but it rarely happens. Whenever the next thing to do is going to be too big to complete that day I will generally finish up. How late I work tends to just depend on how immediate the deadline is, if something needs doing for the following day you obviously have to keep going until it is finished. 
 
If there is no marketing or Chambers social event that evening – like drinks or dinner with solicitors and other colleagues from Chambers – I will generally go home and have dinner with my partner. The only other thing I might do in the evenings during the week is play some guitar, which I have been trying to learn on and off, or I go bouldering with a friend occasionally. Like I said – pretty unglamorous. One thing your aspiring sports or other lawyers need to make sure is that they enjoy the work because you spend a reasonable amount of your time doing it!