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Public Policy

A Safe Bet

Orrick partner Jeremy Kudon (’00), who advocates for his clients in state capitals across the country, has helped pass a slew of laws legalizing sports betting, including in Massachusetts.

He’d had success with that strategy in an earlier campaign on behalf of satellite TV providers DISH Network and DirecTV, which joined forces to defeat tax bills pushed by cable companies who wanted to protect their market share.

In the face of industry-wide restrictions, competitors are “much more similar than they are different,” Kudon explains. “They’re going through all the same things.”

Kudon’s pitch worked: His clients, DraftKings and FanDuel, teamed up on a massive lobbying blitz in which Kudon and the public policy practice he leads as a New York-based partner at Orrick have helped pass legislation in dozens of states legalizing bets on not only fantasy sports but actual sports, too. In Massachusetts, retail sports betting at casinos began in January, and online betting began on March 10, just in time for March Madness (under the new law in Massachusetts, which Kudon and his team worked extensively on, residents cannot bet on Commonwealth college teams unless they are in a tournament with at least four other schools; no Massachusetts squads are playing in the Big Dance).

“It’s been very fortuitous,” Kudon says.

That’s something of an understatement considering the effort he has put in over the years. But Kudon’s path to a policy-based practice that taps heavily into his passion for sports was somewhat fortuitous. He was well on his way to a career as a litigator when he was assigned to the courtroom battles DISH and DirecTV were fighting. But, after another associate who had been assigned to work on the legislative front for the clients bowed out, Kudon was eager to step in. 

“I thought, ‘I grew up in DC,’” Kudon laughs, remembering his eagerness to try something new.

In fact, his skillset turned out to be well suited for state capitals. In addition to his work on sports betting, Kudon and his team have coordinated legislative campaigns for Warby Parker, car-sharing company Getaround, clean energy firms, and alcohol delivery outfit Drizly, among other clients.

Kudon says he loves being involved in the development of the law for so-called disruptor companies.

“The best lawyers I know don’t view the law as just what’s in the book or on the page,” he says. “They view it as a whole body—from writing it to construing it to implementing it and then back to construing it again. I find it thrilling and every bit as intellectually challenging as what I was doing in litigation.”

Kudon grew up in Potomac, Maryland. His love for sports was entwined with his love of law from the beginning: His father was a plaintiff-side antitrust attorney who worked with teams including soccer’s Washington Diplomats.

After graduating from Miami University in Ohio with a degree in history and political science in 1993, Kudon worked in the insurance industry for a few years to get a taste of the business world. He was accepted off the waitlist at Boston University School of Law, which he calls “probably the best possible thing that ever happened to me.”

“I had a great experience,” he remembers. “For me it was life changing. I owe so much of my success to the school.”

Kudon points to Professors Keith N. Hylton, Michael C. Harper, and the late Joseph Brodley, as particularly influential. But he says BU Law’s writing requirements (now part of the Lawyering & Advocacy Programs) were especially formative.

“It was the most important thing I did in law school,” he says. “Bar none. That’s the thing that sets BU Law apart.”

Kudon received a C+ on his first paper; by the time he graduated summa cum laude, he was ranked third in his class. In his early career as an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell and Heller Ehrman, the writing skills he’d developed at BU Law were an advantage.

“At big firms, in litigation, you’re either writing or doing document review,” he laughs. “Because I was a good writer, I got out of a lot of document review.”

When Heller went bankrupt, Kudon went to Orrick with E. Joshua Rosenkranz, who heads up the firm’s Supreme Court and appellate practice. The DISH and DirecTV matters—Kudon and his team have helped the satellite TV industry defeat more than 100 bills in 40 states—were a turning point for his career. Kudon was good at legislative work; he also felt it offered him more room for growth.

“It wasn’t like litigation, where there were 1,000 attorneys like me,” he said. “Sometimes I was the only lawyer from New York going to these states.”

The success Kudon and his colleagues have had in passing sports betting laws is impressive, especially considering that federal law prohibited most gambling on sports until a 2018 Supreme Court ruling. But it hasn’t been easy. New York posed an early challenge in the fantasy arena in 2015 when the attorney general there issued cease-and-desist letters to FanDuel and DraftKings. Kudon and his team sprang into action, winning passage of a favorable law seven months later in the last hours of the last day of the state’s legislative session.

The bill’s passage “took everything my team had,” he adds. “It’s the only time I’ve ever had tears in my eyes.”

One of Kudon’s major coups was to win over—and eventually represent—Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the PGA Tour, who all were initially opposed to his sports betting operator clients’ business models. When they saw they couldn’t stop the legalization of gambling, they signed conflict waivers so Kudon could advocate on their behalf too, including for laws that required the operators to use the leagues’ official, real-time data.

“That was a thrill,” he says.

Kudon, a self-described “sports addict,” says he loves his sports betting practice, which has been featured in the New York Times and ESPN, among other outlets. But he says he enjoys all his public policy matters.

“Ultimately, I just love the process of passing or shaping legislation, no matter what the issue is,” he says. “You’re trying to solve a puzzle. For me, the joy is having all these different stakeholders and trying to find solutions for all of them so a bill can go forward. I love the legislative process.”