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Russel F. Sauer Jr.

Russel F. Sauer Jr.

Russell F. Sauer, Jr. retired from the partnership at Latham & Watkins LLP in December 2019. He is the former Chair of the Litigation & Trial Department in Los Angeles and practiced with the firm since 1980. Mr. Sauer was a litigator with an extremely diverse practice. He has extensive experience in the areas of:

  • Shareholder derivative litigation and directors and officers defense
  • Insolvency litigation
  • Sports and entertainment litigation
  • White collar criminal matters with civil overtones
  • Trade secret and restrictive covenant litigation
  • Employment litigation (including wage and hour class actions, wrongful termination, whistle blower, and discrimination actions)
  • Other areas of general commercial litigation

He has represented numerous companies and individuals in various types of internal investigations ranging from embezzlement to financial misreporting fraud to the infiltration by organized crime.

Mr. Sauer has tried cases to conclusion before:

  • Both state and federal courts
  • Numerous federal agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board and the US Department of Labor
  • Both domestic and international arbitral bodies including the American Arbitration Association, JAMS, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Switzerland)

He has also successfully argued appeals before both state and federal appellate courts.

At the time of his retirement, Mr. Sauer was a member of the Litigation Section of the American and California Bar Associations, a member of the ABA’s Sports and Entertainment Forum and a graduate of the Sports Law Institute.

He was also a frequent guest lecturer on trial advocacy techniques and sports law at numerous law schools (UCLA Law School, Loyola (Chicago) Law School, Duke Law School).  

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Jingzhou Tao

Jingzhou Tao

Jingzhou Tao is the Managing Partner at Dechert LLP responsible for developing the firm’s Asian practice. He has more than 28 years of experience in advising Fortune 500 companies on China-related matters. His areas of practice include international mergers and acquisitions, arbitration, and corporate work. Jingzhou has represented major Chinese, European, Japanese, and American companies in hundreds of transactions in China on such matters as merger and acquisition; tax planning; strategic alliances; and intellectual property protection. He has acted as counsel, chief arbitrator, or party-nominated arbitrator in international arbitration proceedings involving merger and acquisition, letters of credit, construction projects, management contracts, joint ventures, technology transfers, trademark licensing agreements, agency agreements, and international sales of goods.

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Jeff Mishkin

Jeff Mishkin

Mr. Mishkin joined Skadden's New York office in 2000, after serving as executive vice president and chief legal officer of the National Basketball Association for seven years. For many years, he has represented the NBA as its chief outside counsel.

Mr. Mishkin has participated in every major legal decision that has affected the NBA in the past 35 years — first as an associate and then as a partner in private practice with a large New York firm, and later as the head of the NBA’s in-house legal department. He has been involved in every round of collective bargaining negotiations between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association, and he directed the NBA’s legal effort in its 1998-1999 labor dispute with NBA players.

As executive vice president and chief legal officer, Mr. Mishkin oversaw every aspect of the NBA’s legal affairs, including all litigation, labor relations, commercial transactions, legislation, and enforcement of the league’s intellectual property rights and its anti-drug program, personally trying and arguing the NBA’s most important cases, including NBA v. Williams (an antitrust and labor law case regarding the NBA’s salary cap); Chicago Professional Sports and WGN v. NBA (an antitrust case involving the league’s national television rights); and NBA v. Motorola (an intellectual property case closely watched across the country concerning the unauthorized transmission via pagers and the Internet of real-time scores and statistics of NBA games).

Since coming to Skadden, his sports practice has expanded to include representation of the PGA TOUR, National Football League, National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, National Collegiate Athletic Association, United States Tennis Association, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Collegiate Licensing Association, Madison Square Garden, New York Knicks, New York Rangers, New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets, Boston Celtics, Phoenix Suns, Toronto Raptors, Toronto Maple Leafs, Denver Nuggets, Miami Heat and many other sports organizations. Among other notable matters, Mr. Mishkin successfully represented the PGA TOUR in Morris Communications v. PGA TOUR, an antitrust case in which the Eleventh Circuit upheld the right of the PGA TOUR to prohibit the unauthorized sale of real-time golf scores.

Mr. Mishkin was named a “Litigator of the Week” by The Am Law Litigation Daily (September 19, 2013) for his work on behalf of the four major U.S. professional sports leagues and the National Collegiate Athletic Association in securing an affirmance by the Third Circuit of a permanent injunction preventing the state of New Jersey from authorizing gambling on the leagues’ athletic events. He also serves as an arbitrator for the Court of Arbitration for Sport headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland.

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