Karen Leetzow’s, WCL/JD ’91, three-decade legal career was jumpstarted by her talented work in trademark and intellectual property law. It has grown thanks to her ability to nimbly jump between legal topics—from antitrust to labor to sponsorship—at a moment’s notice. But that success has been built atop a foundation of strong relationships. 

Now the chief legal officer at the United States Soccer Federation, Leetzow previously spent 20 years at NASCAR, where a mentor once told her, “Most of our problems we’re going to solve through the relationships we create.”

In summer 2020, she was tasked with mending an important one with US Women’s National Team players; an opportunity to head US Soccer’s legal department “really spoke to me in terms of how fractured the relationships were.”

Over the next two years, she and her legal team helped pick up the pieces. In February, they settled a gender discrimination lawsuit with members of the women’s national team, and in May, they finalized collective bargaining agreements with the men’s and women’s national team players associations that secured equal pay, a first in international soccer.

The milestone represents both the arrival of labor peace at the top levels of American soccer and the culmination of a collaborative process. “The women and men behind their players associations really had to want this to happen, and you can never solve issues unless you have willing partners on the other side,” Leetzow says. “I’m extremely grateful to all of them. I think we’re . . . in a new era, and I’m excited to see what happens.”

In June, Leetzow joined the 30 Minutes On podcast to discuss the recent legal breakthrough and the lessons she’s learned in law.

Listen to the podcast, or read the full transcript below:   

full transcript

Andrew Erickson: Hello and welcome to 30 Minutes On, a podcast from American University magazine. I’m American magazine staff writer Andrew Erickson.

Today, in our summer 2022 episode, we’re spending 30 minutes on sports law.

Earlier this year, the United States women’s national soccer team reached a couple historic agreements. In February, the United States Soccer Federation agreed to pay women’s national team players $24 million—including back pay—to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit filed in 2019. That laid the groundwork in May for the men’s and women’s national team players’ associations coming to terms on new collective bargaining agreements that guaranteed equal pay in international competition.

Karen Leetzow, a 1991 graduate of the Washington College of Law, joined American soccer’s governing body in summer 2020 as its chief legal officer with the goal of repairing relationships with players and bringing about labor peace. This spring, she and her team were able to do just that, as she played a key role in negotiating those landmark deals.

In the absence of black letter law helping guide her and her team through the negotiations, Leetzow went back to “what I think is the core of any good deal. It’s the relationships between the parties,” she says. “We started there and started rebuilding those relationships. It’s really about people more than anything else.”

Leetzow joined 30 Minutes On. . . in June and filled us in on her three decades in law—including 20 years as NASCAR intellectual property and general counsel—that led her and US Soccer to this historic moment.

Here’s our interview. We hope you enjoy.

Andrew Erickson: So, Karen, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. I really appreciate it. So in May, it was announced that US Soccer and the men’s and women's national team players associations had reached collective bargaining agreements that achieve equal economic and other terms. Now more than a month removed from that, can you describe your reaction to you and your team being able to get that across the finish line?

Karen Leetzow: Yeah, I think that we’re just really excited. I mean, it’s just been a long odyssey for all of us at the federation, and I think we’re really just ready and anxious to reset the relationship with our players association and move to a new era.

AE: And why soccer? How was soccer, and specifically soccer in the US, able to kind of take the lead on this? And what kind of an example, just looking broad scope, can this set?

KL: Yeah, well, I think we’ve already seen in conversations with other federations that it is setting an example at least in the world of soccer. Why soccer? Well, I think you have to thank the US Women’s National Team for using their platform to sort of bring this to the forefront and provide their perspective on what equal actually means. Because in the past, within the soccer community, particularly with respect to tournament pay, which isn’t set by us, the federation, but is paid out by these other organizations like FIFA and CONCACAF and others, that tournament pay has just been historically so unequal that they felt compelled to use their platform to pursue this, first with the EEOC and then in a court of law. And so that left all of us really looking at the models that existed to see what it was the women were saying and then trying to find a mechanism that would solve for the issue. And obviously that took years.

AE: I read another interview you did where you said that the goal in some ways was to kind of simplify, simplify, simplify. How did that bleed into these interactions and what were some of the goals you had just in setting the tone in these negotiations once you came aboard?

KL: Well, at first I think you need to understand that I’m not a labor lawyer, nor do I think of myself as the best lawyer on the planet, nor did I have any experience at all in sort of equal pay situations. What I do have is decades of experience in sports history with complex negotiations and deals, and I think what I saw when I arrived was such a complex environment with two labor unions, which is unique in the United States, two labor unions working for the same employer, but who do the exact same work. And so how do you negotiate when there are different agreement cycles? They never had in the past negotiated their collective bargaining agreements on the same cycle. You had different perspectives. You had a lawsuit happening at the same time, it really was something that a, is unprecedented period, but for me, incredibly difficult to come in at the end and try and solve. So there’s no black letter law here that would tell us how to solve all of these moving parts. It really to me went back to what I think is the core of any good deal. It’s the relationships between the parties. And so we started there and started rebuilding those relationships. Maybe we can talk about how we did that, but it’s really about people more than it is anything else.

AE: And obviously you joined the US Soccer Federation in the midst of a global pandemic. I’m curious what that first year look like for you. How much of the time was devoted to this very issue and those moving parts, like you said and in what respect it was also just getting the lay of the land.

KL: Yeah, a lot of it, I’ll say for me, was just trying to get the lay of the land. The last thing you want as a lawyer is to step in and think you know everything. And I certainly didn’t, as I said, know much of anything. I do know how sports make money. I do know sort of the general premise of what the federation was trying to achieve. But really a lot of it was the lay of the land. And you have to remember, I was meeting my own team by Zoom because we were socially distanced. I was in a completely different state when I was first hired. And so all of those complexities of trying to build relationships via Zoom, it was a challenge. I do think that we made progress, for sure, but I think when we were able to go back to live bargaining, it was a pivotal moment for all of us because as I said, it’s about people and building relationships. It’s much harder to do that this way.

AE: And what about this opportunity in particular was something that resonated with you and what really led you to want to come aboard?

KL: So, interestingly enough, years prior I had actually applied for this job at US Soccer. I did not get it for a variety of reasons. We can talk about it, but at the time I did not get it. I continued working in my role as general counsel at NASCAR, but my husband took a job here in Chicago. He’s the general counsel for the Cubs and he moved here in 2018. So I had a child to get through high school and send off to college and then I attempted to join him here in 2020 and then COVID broke out. So I had a period where I was just taking really a break to try and assess what this was all going to mean for me and obviously for my family and everyone else when I saw some of the news about US soccer and come up on my own Google Alert. I reached out to their new CEO and said, ‘Look, here’s my story. I have all this experience. It looks like you guys can use some help.’ I was really only thinking in the context of maybe I could help them write some contracts or do some things to keep busy, not knowing all of what was going on inside the federation. He called me back a few weeks later and said, ‘Would you be interested in taking a bigger role?’ And so at that point, I think my naivete or positivity or optimism, something took over. I just said, ‘I think I can help here.’ Even though, as I said earlier, I had not all the pertinent or relevant skill sets for the job, I did have a lot of experience with litigation, and I do think it really spoke to me in terms of how fractured the relationships were.

AE: I know in speaking to people, a lot of jobs, when I ask, ‘What is the day to day like?’ The common answer is there is no day to day. I imagine that is the case with you. How different can what you’re working on, week by week, month by month, differ, and what is it like to have to pivot in those ways?

KL: I think in-house counsel, and I think most in house counsel would agree with me, is really a lot of firefighting. It’s just issues that pop up and where you use your knowledge, skill set, or you hire someone to help with whatever the fire is and try and put it out. I do aspire to the day to day be more normal and relaxed, and I’m hoping that we can dial it down a bit at US Soccer. Ideally, what you’re doing every single day is something that’s relatively predictable and isn’t on the front of the New York Times or anything like that. And so that’s really the difference between what we were doing and what we hope to do going forward, is to just really build the sport at this unprecedented time where the World Cup is actually heading our way here in the US. And we have a lot of positive news. So in-house counsel, general counsel, chief legal officers, they really can’t predict, but that’s part of the fun of being in those roles.

AE: You mentioned just the people aspect of it and whether it’s a labor negotiation or something else, just the importance of making connections, understanding differences. I’m curious, in three decades in law, how much better you feel you’ve gotten at that over time, and what are some of the most important lessons that you’ve learned in that respect along the way?

KL: Yeah, obviously, I think we all get better over time. I think that for me, as an army brat, growing up, we traveled all the time. I was always trying to fit into the next school that I was attending and or the next club I wanted to join or the next sport I wanted to play. It does teach you sort of to pay attention to the people around you and figure out where you can fit in, and not, especially as a teenager, not be the object of ridicule or whatever. So I think adaptation, flexibility, all of those things come more naturally to me, but I did get better. I do think my listening skills over time have certainly improved, as opposed to trying to force my opinion on others, really trying to hear what other people are saying and find that common connection. And the best lesson, I think, for me is just to approach every situation with transparency and integrity and persistence, and usually you can get there.

AE: And changing gears a little bit, what first inspired you to pursue law school?

KL: Oh, great question. Well, a long time ago, when I was little, I just really wanted to be a police detective, and I really thought just solving mysteries was where it was at. Obviously, as I grew up, I realized that it’s not that simple, and I realized that there are a lot of really interesting problems that lawyers were working on. I found out decades later that when my mom was doing sort of her family research that I come from a long line of lawyers and judges. So maybe it wasn’t actually my choice, and maybe I was just destined to do this, but I just really am intellectually curious. I want to be part of something that’s bigger than myself. I want to have an impact. And I really felt that in our society, lawyers are really behind the scenes doing a lot of that.

AE: As you were starting to get later on to law school, was there a particular type of law that you were interested in practicing, and how did you start to delve into those interests?

KL: Yeah, well, I’m certainly not doing today what I thought I would be doing when I was at American. I went to law school really wanting to be a criminal prosecutor and pursued that with all the vigor I had. I actually got an offer to be a state’s attorney in Miami working for Janet Reno at the time, and ultimately could not take that. Just because my law school loans and my college loans were so high that there’s no way I could live on the salaries that were being paid back in that day for those positions. So I declined the position, thinking I would at some point get another offer. It was really interesting. I graduated in a recession, and so a lot of the students who are much smarter than I suddenly started looking away from law firms, because law firms were not hiring, to other areas where they could get litigation experience. Now that was an even more competitive choice to try and be a prosecutor. And then within the next few months, my family became a victim of crime, and my brother was killed in a carjacking in South Florida.

AE: I’m so sorry.

KL: Yeah, it was a really tough time for me, but it really was interesting. Again, it just was one of those things I feel like was ultimately of benefit to me because it led me to intellectual property law as an alternative choice where I wouldn’t be spending my life with criminals. And so I pivoted to that, and it has turned out to be really just an area of the law so well suited for me and gave me all kinds of opportunities I never thought I would have, and I certainly never thought I would be heading NASCAR’s legal department or, later, US Soccer. That just was not on my radar at all.

AE: And when you first dove into it, what about trademark law kind of clicked with you, just the tone of it, the type of issues you were working on? What about it felt like a good fit right off the bat?

KL: Yeah, so particularly trademark law. I mean, branding is such a creative exercise, and a lot of people don’t know this about me, but I have a whole creative bent. I love to design. I’ve designed a couple of homes. I love to paint. I love the clever play on words. I just really appreciated what brand owners were trying to do to help their products sort of jump out to the consumer. It was a very intuitive area of the law as well. The Lanham Act is a really interesting body of law, and I thought, ‘This is a great fit for me, at least at that point in my life.’ And so I went on to work for a law firm, litigating trademarks for the various clients that they had, and just loved every part of that. I think it’s just the creativity of what people are doing in that space that appealed to me.

AE: And I know you joined NASCAR in 1999. How did that opportunity come about? And what about it felt interesting to you?

KL: I had been at the US Patent and Trademark Office for about four and a half years, and my husband at the time, also an AU grad, wanted to go in house for a company in North Carolina, and so I said, I’d go with him. I ended up with this law firm. And then NASCAR was looking for someone who would—they had just done a massive race in Japan, and they realized that they had no trademark expertise in house and no international trademark portfolio. So they were looking for somebody who had both registration and litigation experience to come manage their trademarks. And they hired me as their first trademark counsel to help register their marks around the world.

AE: And I’m curious, just in working in sports industry law, like, the extent to which sports bleeds into that, if it just happens to behave like a normal organization or corporation that sports just happens to be a part of it, or how often those two things intersect in your field.

KL: Well, I think trademarks and branding is a huge part of sports law. Obviously, sports sponsorship is about the affiliation of one brand to another and each trading off and getting the goodwill that the other brings. So it’s extraordinarily relevant to sports law. It also bleeds into, the commercialization of sport is just incredibly strongly based on intellectual property law. It was a great sort of introduction, but I always say that sports law is sort of a misnomer. Your client may be a sport, but they have many more issues than intellectual property issues. For me, it was a great jumping off point to learn whole other bodies of law that apply to sports, but trademarks and sort of that sponsorship and trademark angle got me in the door.

AE: And how did you transition from doing that and mainly focusing on trademark to kind of doing everything under the sun?

KL: When I joined NASCAR, I was one of three lawyers, and so you really had to learn to work on everything. And I think we at the time I joined shortly after, had been sued on an antitrust litigation that was really sort of a game changing lawsuit for the sport of NASCAR, where one of the entities within the sport challenged NASCAR’s right to grant dates, particularly to a sister company, to the exclusion of other tracks. And so for me, this was a really—I had no awareness. I was working in the Charlotte office, but I was chosen because I had had prior litigation experience. And I kind of laughed at my boss. I said, ‘Well, you know, I was litigating trademarks intellectual property, and I have zero antitrust experience.’ And he said, ‘It’s OK, we’re hiring some of the best law firms in the country. You need to teach them the sport and they’ll teach you the law.’ And that’s exactly what happened.

AE: What is it like having to dive into a completely different realm of law at a moment’s notice?

KL: I love it. I really love it, because at the end of the day, in house counsel are often a mile wide in terms of their experience, and an inch deep, because we have to be. There are just so many issues that are coming up. You just need to learn to spot what area of the law that issue is in. How much do you personally know? How much does your team know versus, ‘Oh, no, we’re going to have to hire outside counsel here, and who are we going to hire?’ For me, the hiring choice had already been made. NASCAR chose a terrific law firm with really great lawyers who were my teachers, and so I’ve been able to absorb that and then teach others sort of how to do what we did in that case. But it is one of my favorite things is when we get some new, meaty issue and I’m learning something new because like I said, I tend to be curious and I hope I never lose that.

AE: What are some of the first steps you take in an instance like that where you kind of have to get the CliffsNotes version and then dive deeper? Where do you even start? What are you starting with?

KL: It’s so funny that you ask the question that way because literally the first call I had was with a young female associate who was assigned to the case. And I said, ‘I don’t know anything about this. Do you have CliffsNotes somewhere that you can send me on any trough law?’ And so she literally sent me her book, and I’d read it at night and ask a bunch of questions. I think that’s unusual. The only reason I dove that deeply in was because of the complexity of that particular case. I think generally what happens is you figure out, like I said, how much you know, and then you start really talking about what are the company’s needs here? Do we need to hire someone full time? Do we just need to call someone and ask them a discrete question and we can handle the rest? It’s really just sort of a decision tree that you go through to figure out where you’re going to end up.

AE: Over the last couple of decades, what would you say are some of the biggest differences in the way you practice law? What would you say are some of the most important things you’ve learned during that span?

KL: Oh, wow. I think for me, you come out of law school thinking that there’s a lot of black letter law that’s going to solve your problem, and if you just look hard enough, you’re going to find a preexisting case that will tell you how to handle whatever it is you’re facing. I found exactly the opposite. I can’t think of more than two or three legal questions that I’ve ever been able to answer based on black letter law, either because of the state I was in and it didn’t apply, or because there was some curious argument being made by an attorney on the other side where the case just didn’t apply. And so I find that to be one of the lessons. This equal pay case is a great example. There was no law to help us here. It was just this intersection of all these factors. It’s never assume there’s going to be an answer out there, and litigation, to me, is never the answer. It’s never a good choice for companies except in the most dire circumstances. I think my advice always is find a way through it that makes sense for both sides. And again, build a relationship, try and solve it. I had a mentor once at NASCAR who, really great guy, and he said, ‘I want you to really negotiate the heck out of this contract, Karen, but I’m going to put it in a drawer and I’m never going to look at it.’ And as a young lawyer, I was really offended. ‘What do you mean I’m going to work this contract and then you’re going to put it in a drawer?’ And he said, ‘Most of our problems we’re going to solve through the relationships we create.’ Because especially in the sponsorship context, you might want this sponsor at some point in the future to come back to you. You don’t want them to remember the relationship as having been contentious or awful or some litigation happening as a result. So, for me, again, it’s about the fact that law is what it is, but at the end of the day, many legal issues will be solved by people.

AE: And I’m curious what advice you might give to attorneys, either in law school or fresh out of law school, who are starting to think about how they might specialize or the degree to which they might specialize. What would you tell them about your experience and what to think about in answering those questions?

KL: I think what I learned in life is that you think you’re going to be happy doing one thing and only that one thing. But there are so many interesting areas of the law to explore that if, for example, you don’t end up getting an offer at the firm you wanted or practicing the type of law you wanted, go out there and explore. There’s no reason why you can’t reinvent yourself multiple times in a career as long as you’re going to have. And there’s just a lot of exciting work out there that you’re going to miss if you just focus on one specific thing.

AE: And you mentioned the World Cup coming up in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2026. What else is on the horizon and what has you excited just in your position?

KL: Well, obviously we have the World Cup that’s coming up at the end of this year in Qatar, fascinating tournament. We are following up with the Olympics next year and so we are always busy with the next tournament. But I think, for me, after working on this equal pay case, I’m really excited to see what the growth of women’s soccer in particular looks like over the next four years. Women’s sports generally are really in the news right now, and I think we’re at a pivotal time in our country’s history in moving women’s sports forward. That’s all of us supporting it and also all of the companies that are out there that are providing tournament dollars, putting on events or even television broadcasts need to find ways to help support the women’s game. And I think it’s going to only benefit all of us in sports if that happens.

AE: I think those are all the major questions I have for you. Is there anything else you wanted to add about US Soccer, about your role, anything like that?

KL: Yeah, it’s a small but mighty organization, and I would just love to give a shoutout to my legal team that is every day showing up, trying to solve complex and newsworthy issues while under fire from people who may not understand exactly what we’re working on. I also want, just as a side note, and maybe a good place to end on this conversation about relationships is the two players associations that worked with us to solve this equal pay issue, and the women and men behind their players associations really had to want this to happen, and you can never solve issues unless you have willing partners on the other side. I’m extremely grateful to all of them. I think we’re, like I said, in a new era, and I’m excited to see what happens.

AE: Well, thank you so much for taking the time, and we very much appreciate it.

KL: Anytime, Andrew. Thank you.

AE: That was the summer 2022 episode of the 30 Minutes On podcast from American University magazine. Thank you so much to our guest, Karen Leetzow, for joining us to chat about labor agreements establishing equal pay for men’s and women’s national team soccer players as well as her extensive legal career.

Be on the lookout for our summer 2022 magazine, which hits mailboxes soon, and read up on stories about other talented alumni, from fellow WCL alumnus Chuck Dickerson’s leadership of the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles to School of Public Affairs alumnus Jason Kander’s retelling of his efforts to address his PTSD in his new book, Invisible Storm. 

You can let us know what you think—about the podcast or the summer magazine—by emailing magazine@american.edu or chatting with us on Twitter or Instagram at @AU_Americanmag.

You can find previously recorded podcast episodes and subscribe in the Apple Podcasts App or Google Podcasts. A full transcript of the show is available on our website at american.edu/magazine. Our theme music is “Laurel Breeze” by Evan Schaeffer.

Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.