Winston, Latham Top Big Law Billers for Fractious Baseball Union

Winston & Strawn led Big Law rivals as the top biller for the labor union representing Major League Baseball players, which cut its outside legal costs by half last year after completing a new collective bargaining agreement.

Winston, a longtime legal adviser to the MLB Players Association, collected roughly $264,000 for salary arbitration work, according to a union financial statement filed this month with the US Labor Department.

Lawyers and other professionals from more than a dozen firms ranging from legal giants to smaller shops incurred about $1.7 million in fees on behalf of the union in 2023. The sum is down from the roughly $3.7 million the organization incurred in the year prior, when the MLBPA clinched a new five-year labor deal after a three-month league lockout.

The legal spending disclosure comes after the MLBPA quintupled in size last year. Minor league ballplayers were organized and absorbed into the union, growing its ranks from about 1,200 to roughly 6,000.

After Winston, the union’s top legal biller was a law firm led by Jeff Fannell, a former MLBPA assistant general counsel who remains a labor relations consultant to the organization. Fannell’s firm collected about $218,000.

Latham & Watkins received $176,000, Boston-based Hemenway & Barnes got $147,000, Weil, Gotshal & Manges received $110,000, and Sidley Austin took in $103,000, the Labor Department filing shows.

Labor-focused firms Bredhoff & Kaiser, at $59,000, and Cohen, Weiss and Simon, with $53,000, fill out the MLBPA’s primary outside counsel roster.

Media contacts at the MLBPA didn’t respond to a comment request.

Unrest Within

Some players upset about the union’s direction, leadership, and spending criticized its most recent collective bargaining agreement last month, according to reports by ESPN, The Athletic, and other outlets.

The key figures behind the turmoil are the union’s current executive director, Anthony “Tony” Clark, a former big leaguer who has led the organization since 2013, and its deputy executive director and chief labor negotiator Bruce Meyer, a former Weil partner who spent more than three decades at the firm.

Clark earned nearly $4.3 million in total compensation last year, up from almost $2.3 million in 2022, the New York-based union’s financial filing shows. Meyer was paid about $1.6 million, an increase from $1.4 million the year prior.

The union hired Meyer in 2018 after he spent two years handling labor affairs for professional hockey players. He took that job after leaving Weil in 2016.

Those who sought changes to the MLBPA’s operations initially rallied around Harrison “Harry” Marino, a former minor leaguer who once worked at Williams & Connolly. The MLBPA hired Marino as an assistant general counsel in 2022 after he had a key role in organizing minor league players.

Marino left the union last summer and formed his own firm after he and Meyer—as lead negotiator—clinched the first labor deal on behalf of minor league ballplayers in March 2023. Marino was paid nearly $227,400 as an assistant general counsel before he exited the union.

While the motives behind both warring parties remain murky, for the time being a potential “coup d’etat”—as baseball super-agent and attorney Scott Boras called the rebellion in voicing his support for current leadership—appears to have been quelled, according to a report by The Associated Press.

Legal Lineups

Other key lawyers on the union’s payroll in 2023 were its new general counsel Matthew Nussbaum, who received $885,300; former general counsel-turned-senior adviser Ian Penny, who was paid $850,400, and deputy general counsel Jeffrey Perconte, who collected $687,000, per the union’s financial statement.

Rounding out the union’s legal staff are assistant general counsel Robert Lenaghan, Robert Guerra, Hiram Arnaud, and Karenna Martin, as well as associate counsel for baseball operations John “Jack” Sexton and attorney and managing director of analytics and baseball operations Gregory Dreyfuss. The lawyers collectively received almost $2.4 million in 2023, the filing shows.

The MLBPA also paid more than $125,000 last year to lawyer and veteran baseball executive Lou Melendez and nearly $143,000 to the union’s former chief administrative officer Martha Child.

Other firms on the organization’s payroll last year were San Francisco-based Altshuler & Berzon ($35,000); Dominican Republic lawyer Paola Mañón Taveras ($27,000); Washington’s Groom Law Group ($23,000); New York’s Hayden Law Office ($21,000); Pittsburgh’s Reisinger Comber & Miller ($20,000); and Zuckerman Spaeder ($11,000).

The MLBPA also paid nearly $125,000 to lobbying and public policy firm Elevate Government Affairs LLC. Kroll Associates Inc., a risk analysis and financial advisory firm, received $182,500 for “agent administration” work. Mazars, a firm that audited the union’s financial statement, earned more than $227,000.

New Jersey’s Margolin & Neuner, whose founding partner Diane Margolin is the widow of former MLBPA executive director and general counsel Michael Weiner, received $29,500 from the organization last year for “healthy relationships education.” Baseball has had several prominent players recently be suspended or put on leave for violations of the league’s personal conduct policies.