NIL Pointers for Student Athletes – Part II

To continue this week’s Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) suggestions, below is the second part of our general pointers for student-athletes to keep in mind when it comes to NIL matters—specifically, retaining advisors:

• Student-athletes and their families can engage a non-agent attorney at any time and not risk losing their amateur status. So, at any time that student-athletes have questions or are approached by brands or agents regarding NIL deals, they can retain and consult with legal counsel to assist with navigating any applicable laws and rules.
• To assist with identifying, marketing and obtaining NIL deals, student-athletes are permitted to hire NIL agents before executing an NIL deal and, even, before committing to play for a particular school.
• In retaining agents, it is important to consult a non-agent attorney to ensure that all parties comply with state NIL law, which may require that the agent be licensed or registered in the state or may require that the agent has not represented a university in the last four years. Student-athletes and NIL agents should also review state NIL laws and school NIL rules to determine if the professional relationship also must be disclosed to the student-athlete’s university as well as the appropriate timing of engaging a NIL agent as it might have consequences for high school amateur status depending on the state law in the student-athlete’s home state.
• Legal counsel should be consulted with respect to, and close attention must be paid to, the terms of any engagement with an NIL agent to ensure that the engagement is solely with respect to NIL matters while the student-athlete is competing in collegiate athletics and does not extend beyond such timeframe. This is especially important when considering “opting into” an institution’s collective as some collective’s have become a mechanism to become the “agent of record” for an athlete which can have some negative implications down the road when a student-athlete moves on to the next level or transfers to another school that does not deal with such “agent of record” collective.