Jim Sturman KC

Jim Sturman KC is joint Head of Chambers at 2 Bedford Row. Jim has vast expertise in criminal and fraud work and is ranked in Band 1 for Silks in Sport by Chambers.[1] Additionally, Jim is ranked as a Star Individual in both Crime and Financial Crime by Chambers.[2] Jim’s sports law experience includes having regularly appeared before all sporting tribunals including the Court of Arbitration for Sport and acting for the likes of Chelsea FC, Tottenham Hotspur FC, Newcastle, Millwall, CSKA Moscow and other Clubs all over the world. Players and managers represented include José Mourinho, Frank Lampard, John Terry, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Joe Cole, Gus Poyet, Dele Ali and a host of other household names.[3] Jim also acted for The FA against Roy Keane. He has acted and advised in doping, breach of contract, and “tapping up” cases, as well as sports corruption allegations. Further details on Jim’s experience can be read at 2 Bedford Row and Jim Sturman KC. 

1. When and how did you first start working in sport? 

The first sports case I ever did was in 1999 when Graeme Le Saux, the former England and Chelsea player, smacked Robbie Fowler in the back of the head at Stamford Bridge after Fowler was taunting him for allegedly being gay – probably before you were born, Oliver?

Fowler abused Graeme with homophobic insults and gestures. Graeme’s response was a request for Robbie to stop, ‘My wife and child and father are in the crowd, leave it out Robbie’. They played together for England, by the way. 

It would be fair to say that Fowler’s response brought the red mist down. Graeme, having some street smarts, waited for the referee’s back to be turned and then decked his abuser. That’s in the days before video evidence had ever been used in FA disciplinary proceedings. 

Suffice to say, the press were immediately all over it. Straight after the full-time whistle Graeme went into the referee’s room and apologised to the officials. The FA brought a misconduct charge and they also prosecuted Robbie Fowler for the homophobic abuse. A few weeks later Robbie Fowler was guilty of a further regulatory offence when, having scored a goal, he went down on his knees and pretended to snort a line of cocaine up from the pitch in response to Everton fans taunting him about allegedly using cocaine. In the most sanctimonious interview I’ve ever read, bearing in mind how he had been abusing Graeme, he said, ‘Don’t people understand that this sort of chant hurts your family, not just you?’. 

Graeme asked me to represent him up at St Andrew’s. He’d already been sent off once that season so he should have been looking at a five-game ban, but having heard the mitigation, the Panel gave him a one-game ban and a small fine. Robbie Fowler’s case was heard immediately afterwards and he was banned for a total of six games - two for the abuse and four for the ‘cocaine snorting” celebration. 

That was the beginning of my sports law practice. All the way up on the train, the Club Secretary was saying, ‘I don’t understand why we are complicating this by using a lawyer, what are you going to say that I can’t say?’. Then all the way back, the Chief Executive was saying, ‘The best idea I ever had was to use you’. The work for Chelsea flowed from that. 

I’d been recommended to Graeme as the best advocate one of his friends knew, so that’s how I got my first sports law case and the sports law practice grew from there – luck or serendipity, call it what you will. Thereafter it was all word of mouth. I did most of Chelsea’s disciplinary cases for about fifteen years, certainly the on-pitch matters, and we had some phenomenal victories. The work increased because clubs like people they trust and who understand the business. It grew from being just on-field disciplinary to contractual, regulatory and other breaches of the rules. I did the Ashley Cole tapping up case for Chelsea and UEFA cases involving players and failing to control fans. 

As a result of recommendations, other clubs used me. Gus Poyet left Chelsea and went to Spurs. I’d got to know him very well, and I ended up representing Spurs. Spurs recommended me to other clubs, and so for a period of about ten years I was probably doing more “football cases” than anyone. The growth into off field activity cases was very much after I began to work for Chelsea, when I began to do more contractual disputes. Again, the work spread by word of mouth, I was recommended to agents, I did contractual disputes between agents, and then the work spread abroad as well. 

2. Are there any courtroom victories that you are particularly proud of or that were particularly rewarding? 

The most significant ones are mostly in the criminal context. I’ve been privileged to represent no fewer than three people who were acquitted or had their convictions quashed for murder because it was proved they were innocent, despite sometimes very strong appearances to the contrary. In two cases, where I didn’t act at first instance, their convictions were only quashed after serving long periods in prison.
 
Nothing keeps you up at night more than the terror of defending a person you believe is innocent and against whom there might well appear to be a compelling but totally unfounded case.
 
Within a sporting context, I have enjoyed every case and each “victory” has been rewarding in a different way. In terms of amusement, nothing beats securing Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s successful appeal against a red card after he’d been sent off against Spurs – I’m a fanatical Spurs fan, by the way. In those days, players had the right to give evidence “live” at their appeals, even for on field misdemeanours, and as we parted after the case Jimmy offered me a ticket for Chelsea’s next game (also against Spurs in one of those quirks of the fixture calendar). I sat with his friends during the game and he proceeded to score a hat-trick, which gave rise to a shed load of banter, post-match and forever after, at my expense of course. 
 
In terms of winning cases against the odds in sport, I successfully defended Millwall twice on charges of failing to prevent their fans from behaving in a racist manner. The one that was particularly hard fought was an allegation arising out of the misbehaviour of their fans against West Ham, when West Ham were convicted and Millwall were acquitted. 
 
I prosecuted Roy Keane for The FA for a tackle on Alf-Inge Haaland and writing about it in his first biography. If you read Roy’s second autobiography, the whole of Chapter One is about my prosecuting him for The FA and he calls me ‘the f**ker’ throughout the chapter. That case probably got more publicity than most high-profile murders or frauds I’ve ever done. I still get the occasional contact from somebody who has read Chapter One of The Second Half. 
 
So, there’s quite a few different answers to that question, but nothing beats the stress and the sense of achievement in successfully representing somebody who’s found not guilty of murder. Colin Stagg was a famous case that I was instructed in where the public thought a guilty man had “got off”. I never believed for one second that he was guilty, and after he was acquitted I spent ten years telling anyone who would listen that the wrong man had been arrested. Ten years later, the right man was arrested, pleaded guilty and tragically had killed somebody else whilst Colin was in custody for a crime he didn’t commit. So, the level of stress you face defending an innocent man facing a murder charge and prosecuting or defending in a regulatory offence are not remotely comparable. 

3. How would you describe your own advocacy style? 

That’s impossible to say. I don’t think you can describe yourself. I really do think that’s for others to say. I don’t think I’m long-winded, I like to be blunt and to the point, but I didn’t start like that. In the sort of cases I do now, there are normally skeleton arguments and everybody has seen the evidence so a lot is taken as read and you can be shorter.
 
You try to confine yourself to the relevant points and deal with them as attractively as possible. But as to what my style is like, I’m sure in sporting disciplinary cases some people will say it really annoys them! There are very different styles for jury advocacy, as opposed to in a sporting disciplinary tribunal, or the Court of Appeal for that matter.
 
In the Court of Appeal (or an arbitral tribunal), a judge might say to you, ‘I’ve read the papers, Mr Sturman’ to encourage you to be quick. But you might discover that judge probably hasn’t when five minutes later he asks you a question which indicates a total lack of knowledge of the skeleton arguments, let alone all of the papers. Even then I try to be brief, but you have to be flexible and weigh up the tribunal just as they are weighing up your arguments. 
 
Total mastery of the detail in the papers should be a given but it helps to have a passionate belief in what you’re saying as it can make you more convincing. But you can’t fake that. If I passionately believe X is innocent, I have to be very careful that I don’t come across as an uncritical mouthpiece, because the judge, and the jury, require a more reasoned and analytical approach. There’s no doubt that a passionate belief often helps with a jury, but the converse can also be true. Passion doesn’t necessarily help in a sporting disciplinary tribunal, so you have to tailor your approach to your tribunal. 
 
I try to keep to the point, and can be very fast in my delivery. In most of the sports law work, the issues are set out comprehensively in writing in advance. It’s very, very important to ensure your written submissions set out your case comprehensively and in its best light. Written advocacy can be just as, if not more, important as your oral submissions.
 
4. Are there any specific areas of sports law that interest you the most? 

I really enjoy the overlap between sports law and crime. The overlap between corruption and sports regulation is incredibly interesting. The recent Economic Crime Act has got many companies running scared as now the corporate can be attributed to have committed offences through their senior managers.
 
It’s going to be interesting to see how that develops over the next few years because if, for instance, a football club produces false accounts to stay within FFP, that is now arguably a criminal offence that could be laid at the door of the club responsible rather than just the individuals involved. I think it’s going to be fascinating to see how that plays out. 
 
The cases that I’ve done involving allegations of corruption in sport have been complex and a challenge. That’s not just corruption within the context of match fixing, I was involved in the appeal – successful I hasten to add - of Mohamed bin Hammam, who was accused by Sepp Blatter’s FIFA of corruption.
 
I was involved in the IOC doping corruption case and I’ve been involved in fraudulent doping cases where false certificates have been provided. I did an amazing case for CSKA Moscow many years ago, where a complaint made by another club was based on – to say the least - “unorthodox” documentation. The case would have been a great plot for a film. 
 
Defending those criminal cases where there’s an overlap between crime and sport is really what I find most interesting because of my life-long interest in sport. There’s actually very few people who have a big sports law practice who have a serious criminal practice. A lot of criminal lawyers will say they are “sports lawyers”, but the fact that they’ve done David Beckham’s speeding case does not make them a sports lawyer, in the same way as doing Declan Rice’s conveyancing doesn’t make a solicitor a sports lawyer. 
 
Sports Clubs and players caught up in a criminal case face enormous reputational risks and huge damage from adverse publicity. If it’s a quasi-criminal sports case, you’re not going to read about it on our website. If it’s not in the public domain, you will not hear that I’m in it. 
 
5. If you could change one rule, law or regulation in sport, what would it be?

I don’t think the current regulations to prevent racism in football grounds are all they could be. Quite what the answer is, I don’t know. I don’t think you should change the rules to impose automatic points deductions, because nearly every club is extremely conscientious about trying to stamp it out. 
 
I think if you imposed points deductions for this sort of conduct, there will be cases where clubs are having points deducted for the behaviour of people who purport to be fans who aren’t actually fans at all. But I don’t see why something more can’t be done to ensure these people are rooted out and stopped from coming into grounds immediately, which brings me on to part two, and that is enforcing the criminal law against those trolls who racially abuse players during a game. The relevant units at the Premier League are brilliant at tracking these people down very, very, very quickly. When identified, they should be charged, prosecuted and kept away from football – immediately if possible.
 
Whether or not the rules need to be changed or enforcement needs to be better, I feel very strongly that more could be done to prevent people behaving badly in football grounds, and in particular racially abusing people, homophobically abusing people, whatever it may be. 
 
6. What has been the key to your success? 
 
Luck! But once you get an opportunity, you have to work your backside off to make sure you can take it. I’ve been very lucky and I’ve had opportunities and I’ve been able to take those opportunities. But to take them, you sometimes have to make a lot of sacrifices, Oliver. 
 
On occasion, you will have to sacrifice your personal life. A lawyer’s work-life balance doesn’t exist as a relevant factor in the thinking of a sportsperson who’s in big trouble, who wants to choose a barrister and who faces very tight deadlines to respond. If you turn round and say, ‘I’m very sorry, my work-life balance means I only work Monday through Thursday and I don’t work weekends and I only respond to emails between nine and five’, the potential client will go elsewhere to somebody who is available 24/7, 7 days a week..
 
If you want to build a practice in this field, it’s the client’s interests that you are protecting, and there will always be impossible deadlines and sometimes impossible expectations from clients. In my case, I just worked every hour God sent. There is no substitute for hard work and preparation at all. Those who think there is are in for an extremely unpleasant surprise. Even when I was on holiday in the days before email, my mobile phone was always on. Even when I had an old Nokia, I could still be reached. The fax machine was always running. Now, I’m available all the time on email. If you ever get my out of office reply, it says, ‘Ring me if it’s truly urgent’. People that do know me, know that if they do, I will answer. The message is of course code for ‘don’t bother if it’s a "fire and forget email", I won’t reply’.
 
The key to my success as a sporting disciplinary lawyer is the background I had in training to be a criminal advocate, where again I was very lucky to be given lots of opportunities very early on. By the time I was ten-years’ call, I’d already done twenty-five murder trials. I’d been led in all those, so I saw some of the best advocates of their generation, people like Michael Corkery QC, sadly no longer with us, and others, such as Bill Clegg KC and John Kelsey Fry KC, who were a genuine inspiration. Having seen them and learnt from them I developed my own style. They (and others) also showed me that hard work and preparation are non-negotiable, but when you have the luck to be instructed in a great case, grab the opportunity with both hands, master the facts and apply the law and regulations to those facts. My sports law practice developed through serendipity I suppose, a series of happy pieces of luck and opportunities that allowed me to develop a sports law practice without me purposely setting out to do anything of the sort and without “marketing” or “networking”. 
 
7. What advice would you give to aspiring sports lawyers? 

Very few of you are going to be sports lawyers from the get-go. Concentrate on becoming the best lawyer you can be within those seats or areas of practice you train in. If you can’t get into one of the sports law solicitor firms, join the best firm you can. Make sure you become the best and most well-rounded lawyer you can be, so that when a sports client comes along, you are able to win the “beauty parade”. Most sports law clients will want to see two or three people before they choose their lawyer. Make sure you take that opportunity to impress. You need to be at the top of your game and to be a person that inspires confidence in your client. If you inspire confidence and then get them a good result, the sports world is such that your name will be passed on. That’s what happened to me. All the skills you learn when training will be transferable to a client with a sporting connection. It brings me back to the foundation of every good practice, and it seems very unfashionable to say it these days but it is no less true now than when I started, you’ve got to work really hard to become really good. Bluffers are spotted a mile off. 
 
It’s a great part of the law to specialise in, but nearly nobody can do it all the time. Be the best lawyer you can be and be patient, the sports law work will come. 
 
8. Please can you describe a typical day in your life?
 
There’s no such thing! But if I’m in court in a trial, a typical day is: 
-6am: Wake up.
-By 7am: In a coffee shop near London Bridge, to avoid the crush on the tube.
-8:30am: Into the building when it opens, conference with client, preparing cross-examination.
-10am – 4:30pm: Hearing, every break taking instructions, liaising. 
-After court: Short conference with the client. 
-Four times a week: personal trainer for an hour to try to keep my head together by keeping physically fit.
-7pm – 12am or as needed: Work, depending on the stage of the case.   

And repeat, and repeat, and repeat.
 
If I’m “only preparing” for a case where the hearing isn’t underway, it will all depend on the stage of the case: 
-Anything from 6.5 to 14 hours depending on the stage of the case and any deadlines.
-Responding to emails on other cases which of course will all be at different stages of preparation. 
-Maybe responding to an emergency sports law case where there’s a deadline that needs to be met or advice needs to be given about whether to appeal.
-Perhaps a conference, which of course now are a bit easier because they don’t always have to be in person, some of them can be remote.
-Between 20 minutes and 2 hours a day on chambers administration, in my role as Joint Head of Chambers.   

It’s always six days a week, sometimes it’s seven. Now I try to take longer holidays than I used to take, because you can’t do seven days a week all year without something suffering. So, a typical day is grinding and at the end of it, l find some time to play with the cats, and to annoy my long-suffering family if they’re around. 

A word of advice: working hard doesn’t mean giving everything else up. I carried on playing mid-week football (badly) into my late 40’s, it was a vital way to let off steam. See your friends, stay fit and even if the breaks don’t come immediately don’t be downhearted. That silk you might envy now probably began his or her career with no connections in the law and made it solely through their own personal grit and drive. You can do the same. 

[1]https://chambers.com/legal-rankings/sport-london-bar-14:648:11841:2
[2]https://chambers.com/legal-rankings/crime-london-bar-14:347:11841:2; https://chambers.com/lawyer/jim-sturman-kc-uk-bar-14:227296 
[3]https://chambers.com/lawyer/jim-sturman-kc-uk-bar-14:227296