Jonathan Wohlwend, Associate Attorney at Bradley, joins Steve Wood, Ph.D. to talk about Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) and the legal implications around NIL. Jonathan provides background on what NIL is and is not, particularly within the context of college athletics, and describes how the process for NIL works for recruiting players. Jonathan defines what a collective is, the changes that have happened over the years around collectives, and their role in NIL deals. Steve and Jonathan also discuss several cases related to NIL. Lastly, Jonathan shares his past background as a JAG Officer and words of wisdom for attorneys who are earlier in their career.
Full Episode Transcript
[0:14] Steve Welcome to another edition of the Litigation Psychology Podcast, brought to you by Courtroom Sciences. Dr. Steve Wood. If you have listened to the podcast with any regularity, you know that Bill and I are huge sports fans. We talk a lot on the podcast about sports pro, but a lot about college sports. I’m a big bleed green Michigan State fan, so anything about Michigan State I love, I love to talk about. And one of the reasons why I’ve always been such a big college sports fan is because I’ve always been a big fan of kind of the grind, the grit, the determination of those college athletes because they’re trying to break in at the next level, so they’re playing at a level that you don’t necessarily always see out of NFL players.
I’ve also been a big proponent of college players making money. Their universities are always making a lot of money off of their performance, so I always felt that it was fair that maybe some of these athletes should make money too. And few years ago, they try to put an agreement in place to make that real. A lot of people probably know about NIL or the Name, Image, and Likeness deals that came into place, and that—that’s led to some good, that’s led to some bad in the college landscape. It’s also led to a lot of litigation, and that’s what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about the overview of what NIL is, and then dive into more about the legal matters of it. And to help me with that, I brought on Jonathan Wohlwend. Jonathan is an associate attorney at Bradley’s Birmingham office. Jonathan, how are you? Thanks for joining the podcast.
[1:46] Jonathan Good, how are you?
[1:47] Steve Great, can’t wait to talk to you about this. Uh, we were talking offline. You—uh, are a Tennessee—even though you’re in the Birmingham office, you are a Tennessee Vols fan, right?
[1:58] Jonathan Yeah, so I’m behind enemy lines here, hoping for a good year. So
[2:02] Steve Yeah, I mean like I said, so far football team looks good, baseball team looks good. And as—as we talked before, nobody cares about baseball. I care about baseball, but down there, I mean I’m in the South too, it’s football, football, football, right?
[2:14] Jonathan Yeah, it’s all—it’s all football down here. And now I still do brag about the national championship in baseball, but it doesn’t have the same impact as bragging about a—a football national championship. And you know, when I moved to Birmingham, Alabama had like—right after I got here, few years later they hired Saban, and that was a rough time to be a Tennessee fan in—in Birmingham, Alabama. Uh, they won six national titles.
[2:38] Steve So I’m still bitter about—I’m still bitter about Nick Saban when he was at Michigan State and then left to—to go to LSU. So never—I don’t think I’m ever gonna truly get over that. Yeah, but you know, and I appreciate you coming on. I know you do a lot of like trademarks, copy—copyrights and patents work, but I know one of your area of expertise, and in fact how I reached out to you, is I saw that you were doing a CLE on the topic of NIL. So that’s really what I want to talk to you about today. And like I said, I’m going to kick it over to you to just kind of give us an overview of what is NIL, and then what is it not? Because even I am not even 100% sure on what exactly NIL is, what—and—and what can they do, what can’t they do? And is it pay-for-play? Is it not pay-for-play?
[3:26] Jonathan Yeah, so NIL—Name, Image, and Likeness—is uh, born out of the legal concept of a right of—of publicity, which is in—inherent in every person to—to protect the use of their name, image, and likeness in commercial purposes. So, name and likeness—those—the term NIL now has—has encompasses the right of publicity, which is not a federal right. It’s—it’s born out of state laws. So, there’s 33 states with explicit right of publicity and in name, image, and likeness. And then uh, other states have sort of adopted um, not necessarily codified rules, but just follow those same common law right of publicity rules. Um, and—and when people think of right of publicity, you normally think of a celebrity. It doesn’t just apply to celebrities. Uh, it’s more public based on celebrities because of the damages, really is what that impacts, is how much money you can get for the misuse of your name, image, and likeness. But everybody has this right to—to protect the use of their own name, image, and likeness, um, to either prevent people from using it or to enter the deals to—to make money off of its use.
Um, and it’s not by itself an intellectual property right. I think it falls under that category. It sometimes plays into the more common intellectual property rights like copyright and trademark. If you have an image of yourself that’s copyrighted, then that’s your name in—in a copyright. Or if you use it as a trademark, then those can kind of intertwine and—and fall under federal law. But typically, you’re going to be dealing with state laws or common law issues when you’re dealing with name, image, and likeness. Um, and you ask what it is not. And—and so, name like this is not new. It’s been around for a while. It’s new to the college world in that they’re now allowed to—to profit off of it. It is technically not pay-for-play. It’s not what it’s supposed to be. This is a right for a college athlete who becomes famous to be able to—to profit off of advertisements or promotions using their name likeness. It’s not—not—it does not fall under the—the pay-for-play, that would be a separate—a separate issue.
Um, you’re kind of seeing it intertwined nowadays in college sports because of the structure of—of college athletics with the recruiting and—and how you get players to come to your school. A lot of times they’re not—they’re not going to want to come unless you can offer some sort of NIL deal or compensation. That’s just the nature of—of—of the business um, because it’s competitive and everybody wants to one-up each other. It used to be before NIL it was, “Oh, if we have the best facilities, we can attract players.” Some of those funds are being now shifted to—to collectives to do these NIL deals to attract more players. Um, so that’s—that’s sort of where it’s at now is it’s not pay-for-play technically, uh, but some people would argue that it’s being used as a form of pay-for-play even though that wasn’t the spirit of what was behind the initial rule changes.
[6:46] Steve So if you can walk me back, like what would it look like? So, if—if a recruiter goes to someone’s house and talks about getting them to come, like what is that? What is the NIL deal that they’re getting to get somebody to come to university? What would that kind of look like?
[7:02] Jonathan So they can vary. Uh, and really before that, the NCAA had rules which have been enjoined by the—the Tennessee and Virginia versus NCAA case. Um, but you couldn’t use NIL as an inducement to recruiting. Um, then the NCAA started investigating Tennessee, the University of Tennessee, over potential allegations that they were using NIL for inducement. They then sued the NCAA and got an injunction saying that you can’t enforce this rule limiting or prohibiting inducement as NIL. So, they can—they can technically do that now. Um, so really from the beginning they weren’t supposed to be offering recruits NIL deals, uh, but it was sort of impractical in how you would approach this recruiting cycle knowing that you can’t induce them now, but once they get there, they can have an NIL deal. So, it’s kind of this weird like, how do you talk about the potential for NIL deals without also it being sort of an inducement for NIL?
Um, and those deals can vary. They can be small amounts, local—local companies offering small amounts of money to do paid advertisements, to do appearances. Or it can be these collectives where they will have fund—po—pots of money that they will deal out for autograph signings, appearances, saying, “We’ll pay you this much if you do this many autograph signings or make this many appearances then you’ll get this amount of money.” And that can increase based on how many appearances you do, how many autograph signings you do, stuff like that. Um, so and some of them are legitimate big-time deals that you see in the news where you see like uh, players signing with Nike or—or big companies. You have some of those NIL deals as well. Those are—are rare. Those are not the common NILs, but you do see those with some of the bigger players.
[9:02] Steve You know, you’ve mentioned like small companies doing autographs or—or doing different commercials and stuff. You know, I’m in College Station and I—I—I’m kind of out and about, but I haven’t really seen a lot of commercials. I haven’t seen a lot of things. I mean, where you’re at, are you seeing a lot of these players doing these types of things?
[9:22] Jonathan Uh, not here in Birmingham as much, but with um, Knoxville, Tennessee, you’ll see some advertisements, some local companies using football or basketball players. Um, there’s one wide receiver for the University of Tennessee who has a deal with a cookie company and every time he scores a touchdown, uh, they offer free cookies to customers who come in the next day and say so-and-so scored a touchdown so I want a free cookie. Um, you’ll see some of those. Um, and then you’ll see some billboards around town with—with players on them occasionally advertising various businesses. Uh, even some law firms had some—uh, some football players. I think uh, one plaintiff’s firm in Kentucky had a—an offensive line, the entire offensive line in an NIL deal for a billboard saying something about like, “Defend”—I can’t remember what the—the slogan was, but it was something—it was a clever slogan using the offensive line for a team and then something about their legal services that was—uh, so you’ll see some of those. Um, but the ones you mostly hear about are the bigger deals or um, the stuff that you don’t see is like these autograph signings can usually be for a select group of donors to the collective that will go in and get signed autographs and that player gets paid for doing that. Um, that’s—that’s also what you’ll see.
[10:55] Steve Gotcha. And you keep—and you’ve mentioned collective multiple times. You know, I want to talk about that. What exactly is a collective? And I know that people get asked to donate to the collective. Uh, I know Bill, my colleague, has mentioned before he gets reached out to by UNC to donate to the collective. What is that? What is that process and what—what is—where’s all that money coming from and where is it going?
[11:15] Jonathan So the—the collectives are technically third-party entities that have been formed to sort of collect—not to use the word in it but uh, collect money to—to negotiate and—and do NIL deals with—with players. And the—the—the way they rose—raise funds is through donations. So um, a lot of the bigger schools are getting their—the big-time school donors to—to instead of—maybe not instead of, but in—in addition to donating to the actual school, to donate some money to the uh, collectives. And then they will take that money and—and do NIL deals with—with players. Whether or not your—your donation is from a company or an individual will—will sort of shape how that deal works out.
Um, and in the beginning, you really didn’t get a whole lot of uh, benefit from uh, donating to the collective personally. I mean it was to help your school get better players, really. I mean, practically that’s what it was. Uh, there were some that were trying to set up as 501(c)(3)s, but then the IRS sent a letter out saying like, “Hey, we’re not so sure that this qualifies as a 501(c)(3).” Um, so they kind of shifted away from that. And now with some of the NIL rule changes and NCAA getting into some legal trouble, collectives have started—they’re now allowed to work closer with—with the actual universities. At first, it had to be totally separate. They couldn’t really interact or work with each other. Now the schools are allowed to facilitate deals for players including with the—with the collective. So now a lot of the collectives are giving priority points for donations. So better seating, access to—to certain things that you wouldn’t get access to unless you were a donor of—to the university the collective. So, you are seeing a lot of schools and collectives kind of work hand-in-hand more to—to promote donating to the collective for NIL deals by offering university benefits like better seating, box seating, stuff like that. Uh, that’s technically against the NCAA rules, um, but you know, nobody’s—nobody’s really stopped—stopped that from happening. And I can’t envision the NCAA stepping in and—and doing anything about it at this stage just based on the—the amount of litigation they’re—they’re—they’re facing. Uh, every time they do something they get—they get sued. So, you know they’re kind of stuck.
[14:09] Steve I want to talk about litigation in a second, but one of the issues I can see is now you have these athletes who are making a million, two million dollars from their NIL deals. Now it seems like there’s this expectation, “Well if we’re going to—if you’re going to make a million or two million, I expect you to perform at the one or two million dollar performance level.” Have you seen, heard—is there any sort of ramifications where you see on the horizon where people are going to start doing anything as it relates to basically not living up to the hype, not living up to the contract of sorts, right? We see all the time on pros, you’re paying Deshaun Watson, you’re paying these other people, and as soon as they don’t perform at that level, they’re getting a lot of pushback and a lot of hatred on social media because now you’re—you’re getting paid and we expect this out of you.
[14:53] Jonathan Yeah, I mean I think uh, that you will get a lot of pushback. Whether or not you could enforce that under the contract is—is not within the rules. So technically it can’t be—the NIL deal can’t be based on—uh, it can’t be pay-for-play. So, it can’t be based on athletic performance. But a lot of them are structured in a way to where if you like—so autograph signings, for instance, if you go out and you underperform, you probably won’t get as many people wanting your autograph. So uh, that’ll—that’ll lower the amount that you’ll make on your—your NIL deal. So they—they—a lot of these—these are sophisticated entities that are doing this and they’ve kind of figured out ways to structure it to where you can fit it within the rules uh, that’s not based on athletic performance technically, but sort of also is impacted by your athletic performance, if that makes sense.
[15:53] Steve Yeah, there’s a lot—a lot of gray areas, which I mean that’s why I want to talk now. Kind of spin in—can you talk a little bit about the litigation that there has been? Both kind of the initial litigation, the NCAA v Alston case essentially, where everybody thinks that’s kind of the a start of NIL, but I’m not sure based upon my understanding that’s not exactly where it started in a true sense. I mean then if you can talk—kind of walk forward about what have been kind of the key litigation that’s occurred since that kind of moving forward and what’s the current landscape look like?
[16:25] Jonathan Yeah, so the Alston case is—is the one that everybody talks about as being the catalyst that started this whole NIL movement. And it—it did in a way, but the Alston case was not about NIL. It was about education-related benefits and restrictions on that under NCAA rules. The reason the Alston case was important is there’s two reasons. One was it—the Supreme Court kind of rejected this NCAA amateurism theory and—and sort of this idea that they should be subject to a different standard under antitrust review. So, in Alston, they—they looked at the NCAA’s education relation—related benefits using the rule of reason standard which um, they found that they—they couldn’t limit that. Their limitations on education-related benefits did violate antitrust. So that was sort of where that all started. Even though it’s not NIL, it was a time when the NCAA rules were looked under the rule of reason for antitrust which kind of had people thinking like, “Oh, if that’s the case then some—a lot of these other rules that they have might not uh, survive antitrust review.”
And then there was the—the Kavanaugh uh, concurring opinion that gets cited a lot where he basically said in it, “You know, we’re saying this violates antitrust and I’m not so sure that your other rules wouldn’t also violate antitrust.” Um, now he was the only one who wrote that opinion. Nobody else was concurring with him, but it did kind of set the tone of, “Okay, we’re going to start looking at these rules a little differently than we have in the past.” So, we’re going to start applying the rule of reason and antitrust. And so that calls into question some of your other rules. And the reason Alston was also big is because at the same time, well before the Alston decision, California had had passed a state NIL law that would allow college players to earn money from their NIL, but that didn’t start till 2023. And then once other states saw that happening, Florida became a state that said, “Oh, well we’ll do that same thing except ours will start in 2021.” Then once Florida did that, of course it’s the SEC, so every other state in that conference was like, “Well we can’t let the Gators beat us, so we have to—we have to do this same thing.”
So other states started passing laws uh, that also would have changed the rules in 2021. And then the Alston decision came out in July of 2021. So, it—it sort of started this thing. The NCAA was sort of waiting on that decision. That decision came out saying, “Oh, we’re reviewing it under the rule of reason,” and Florida had this law. So then after the Alston decision, the NCAA issued the NIL interim policy which basically just said, “We’re not going to enforce the prohibitions on NIL that we previously had.” Um, and that’s sort of how the snowball started from that point. Um, and to get into to sort of other cases, the big—big-time other cases that happened right around—I think it was 2021 right around the same time—there was a—a—an anti-trust case filed called the House versus NCAA case, which is the—the big one. There are several others, but the House case is the biggest one. Um, that was an NIL saying that the rules on NIL were an antitrust violation and that college athletes going back to 2016 are owed back damages for not being able to earn money off their name, image, and likeness. And that uh, current college athletes also should—should be awarded damages and—and a change in the system for how they are allowed to earn money off their NIL.
So, House sort of the damages—I think potential damages in the House case were—I’m gonna say like $4 billion. A lot—a lot of money. So uh, that—that kind of raised the pressure on the NCAA. And then you had multiple other cases. You had the—the Hubbard versus NCAA case, the Carter versus NCAA case, which are also NIL-related antitrust lawsuits that have been consolidated with the House case. Um, so you have those three cases. Then you have another NIL antitrust case, Fontenot, which was filed in Colorado going on at the same time. Um, and so the NCAA was facing billions of dollars in damages. And so the current landscape of the House case was there was a proposed settlement which I’m sure some people have heard about that was entered in May of 2024 of this year, where they are saying, “Okay, we’re going to change the NIL rules, we’re going to pay back damages—1.8 billion I think or something like that.” It was 1 point something billion, I can’t remember the exact amount, but it’s a lot of money.
And then we’re also going to allow schools to pay student athletes for NIL for uh, up to $20 million a year. Um, and uh, we’re going to have some—we’re going to allow third parties to do NIL deals, but we’re also going to have this review system where we’re going to review it to make sure it’s a legitimate NIL deal. And so that was—that got filed, the proposed settlement got filed and they had a hearing um, on September I believe that was like the 4th or the 5th and uh, a lot of people were expecting the judge to grant preliminary approval. Uh, she did not. So, Judge Wilken in—in California did not grant preliminary approval. She had some issues with—with the way the settlement was structured. Um, specifically regarding this—one of them was the pay-for-play issue. So technical settlement pay-for-play would still be prohibited and she was wondering how that would work when you’re allowing schools and third parties to pay the players for their NIL for legitimate NIL things. And she’s like, “How is this—how are you going to differentiate between that and pay-for-play? That seems like something that’s going to be challenging and maybe not practical.” Um, and she also had issues with the settlement lasted for 10—it’s—it’s a 10-year run. So um, she was like, “Well what if you have a student athlete who—who’s in high school right now and then he goes to college and then he’s subject to these rules and this settlement that he—that he wasn’t involved with at all during it?” Um, so we’re waiting to see if that—they have a hearing in three weeks to see if that’s—if they can work those issues out. But um, it’s up in the air right now with the—the House settlement.
[23:51] Steve Yeah, there’s a lot. I mean, ton of litigation around this. I think I saw something this morning, they were talking about Michigan was going to sue the Big 10 Network for some money that they were owed to—like, I was Denard Robinson was—was trying to sue. So, you have a lot of those too, right? A lot of additional players coming out of the—the woodwork now say like, “Hey, wait a second, I need to get—”
[24:10] Jonathan We’re—yeah, so the House settlement covered players that played from 2016 onward. Now you have other lawsuits. Um, the Denard Robinson lawsuit for example, he filed that yesterday, I think. Um, where he’s saying, “I played before 2016 and you guys exploited my name, image, likeness and you had these rules prohibiting me from earning money and so I’m—I’m owed uh, money for that as well.” Uh, that—that lawsuit I think is for $50 million. So, and you have another one involving a—a former basketball player suing the NCAA for use of his name, image, and likeness in the—uh, One Shining Moment video where he’s—he has a moment there that gets replayed every year. And he’s like, “Well you guys never paid me for that and now you’re changing the rules, and I should have been allowed to—to make money off of that.” So it’s—they’re—they’re facing uphill battles everywhere—everywhere they look.
[25:08] Steve And I think you’re gonna have a lot—I mean, it’ll be kind of a litmus test of sorts. Let’s say, for example, Denard Robinson wins, then then it’s kind of a snowball effect. Where does it start and where does it stop? Now is each player going to start reaching out and doing it? Are team’s going to do it? Um, I think it’s going to be interesting to see how all this kind of rolls out. I mean, I think that from a legal perspect—perspective, is there a way to even insulate yourself from that where there’s any sort of things you can put in to say, “Okay, we can’t go back any further than this amount,” or “We’re going to limit it to this amount of money?” Like, what—what’s the legal landscape look like or is there anything?
[25:42] Jonathan Yeah, I’m not sure there is anything. I mean, I think that’s one of the issues that they’re facing is that we’re trying to solve change these NCAA rules through litigation and settlement, which it’s probably not the way to do it. I mean, I think if you’re going to do it, you might need to do it through the NCAA system. Or a lot of people are arguing for collective bargaining, to let the players unionize, so that way that alleviates a lot of the antitrust concerns with future rules. But you still have this past rules to deal with. And the question is how far back can you go? Can you keep going eternity? I mean, I—nobody really knows. And I think that’s the—the struggle that the NCAA and—and the schools are facing is like, when—when does it end? When does it—when have we—when can we say, “Okay, we’ve fixed it, everybody’s happy now?” I—I’m not sure that we know the answer to that, right?
[26:40] Steve Yeah, you know, and I want to—I want to move on from NIL and talk to you a little bit about you. Before you actually came there, you were an assistant JAG officer in the Air Force, were you not?
[26:52] Jonathan I was, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[26:53] Steve So can you talk to me a little bit about that? Like, how is being a JAG officer and then now where you’re at in your position, like, what skill set did you bring from that that is transferred over to your current role?
[27:06] Jonathan So yeah, it was a—it was definitely a different role. Uh, as a—a judge advocate in the Air Force, um, mostly did criminal litigation, so handled prosecution of—of crimes in the Air Force. Um, so a lot of that doesn’t necessarily translate to NIL stuff. I mean, think the litigation is helpful in that I was in a courtroom uh, basically every day that I worked in the Air Force. So, it was right next—the courtroom was literally not right next to my office, so I would just go in there every day and we’d have trials or hearings or something. Um, but I think the biggest skill that translated was time management and management of people. That was something that you had to learn pretty quick in the Air Force. You’re dealing with uh—you get there, you go to training, and then you get sent to a base and you’re just—you’re—you’re it. You’re—you’re the guy. You’re put into the fire. So um, you had to learn how to manage both your team and the—the tasks that you had. So, it’s—it’s more of a—a—a leadership and management skills that apply, rather than the actual legal work that I did, because that was mostly in a—in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which doesn’t—doesn’t come up very much in IP or uh, or NIL. But um, some of those real-life experiences of just talking in front of people, managing people, dealing with multiple tasks at once have definitely helped in that area for sure.
[28:43] Steve A lot of our listeners are probably more mid-level, you know, associate attorneys working their way up or new partners. I mean as far as that goes, what kind of words of wisdom do you have for them as far as what you’ve seen from your position as a JAG officer now here, like as far as to help them increase and—and get better and move along in their career?
[29:04] Jonathan Yeah, I mean I think you know, maybe this is “quote-unquote” coach-speak, but um, you know, you take it one day at a time. You know, when I came into the—to private practice, it was definitely a shift. I mean there was—you know, I’m now working on billable hours, which is a different structure than I was used to. Um, but if you just keep focused and—and you have a task in front of you and you—you focus on completing that task and just take it one day at a time, I think that you’ll see some success born out of that.
And as far as, you know, if—if—if you want to break into an area or a field and like NIL, um, really how that happened with me was I would—I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. You know, I’m in Birmingham, Alabama, we’re pretty big into college sports down here. We don’t have professional sports team, so that’s sort of our—our outlet. Um, and I saw the rules were about to change and—and thought, “Oh, this could be—this could be big. I mean, there’s going to be tons of—there’s tons of money. It’s a billion-dollar industry. There’s—there’s lots of opportunity there.” And so, I just started writing on it, reaching out to people in the industry, going to conferences, doing things like that, just getting—meeting people and—and sort of talking about the subject. And that’s—that’s a great way to—to sort of take the initiative and get—and get your name out there even if you don’t have much experience in it. And it—NIL was kind of lucky because uh, nobody had experience in it. It didn’t exist before, so right, so I was—we were all sort of on an even playing field. Um, so that sort of helps there. But if there’s—if there’s something that you want to do as a young associate or a new partner and—and you—you see an opportunity, I would—I would encourage anybody to just start writing on it, start getting the word out there, start going to conferences, start doing things that can help you to—to build you sort of your—your knowledge base in that area.
[31:09] Steve Yeah, I think that’s great because you know, and I talk with other attorneys and even older attorneys that say, “How did you—how did you get to where you’re at?” They a lot of times they said, “I just asked for—I asked to do things.” A partner came to me and says, “I need someone to do something,” and you’re the first person to say, “Me, I’ll do it,” just to try to get more experience.
[31:27] Jonathan Yeah, you never know what it can lead to, right? You—you never know what that one project or that one case might lead to in the future. And—and so even if it sounds like something you’re not interested in at the time, maybe—maybe do it. It—put your best effort into it. And if—if afterwards you’re like, “That was terrible,” uh, that’s fine. But if—afterwards you might like it and—and then it grows into something bigger, right?
[31:51] Steve Yeah, you know, and Jonathan, in addition to NIL, what can you talk about what other types of cases are you working on?
[31:59] Jonathan So I do um, a lot of just base intellectual property stuff. Trademark applications, trademark enforcement, writing cease and desist letters, um, copyright protection, patent drafting. I’m patent-barred. Um, so I do a little bit of that. My background’s in biology, so um, I—it’s—I know I have a weird background, but so I do biology stuff and then I also have a—an area of practice in government affairs where I do um, sort of legislative review, legislative drafting. Some—I don’t actually lobby, but you know, we do have a lobbying effort that we do here. So um, sort of that. And that’s—that’s sort of what shifted me towards NIL was that there’s a lot of in legislation going on as well. So, and it’s intellectual property, so those kind of combined and sort of met at the same time. So that sort of worked out. But yeah, so my practice is all over the place. I do some intellectual property litigation as well, so a mixed bag of—of work there.
[33:10] Steve Biology to intellectual property to trademarks—how—how do the—how the hell did you get to that?
[33:14] Jonathan Uh, you know, I was in college, didn’t know what I wanted to do. I changed majors like three times, so um, I think I went from I—well actually, I know exactly what my majors were. I started out as graphic design. Uh, it turns out I can’t draw. Um, then went to international relations and was like, “I don’t even know what this is,” but sounded cool. And then I was like, “No, this is not going to work.” So, I eventually landed on uh, biology. And then after graduating college in 2009—not a great time to graduate college, yeah, the economy was not booming at that point—um, took two years working in a lab, a biotech lab, then was like, “I think I want to do something else.” So, I did uh, law school and then it all just kind of happened from there. Uh, sort of just—that’s just the way it went. Just went with the flow a little bit.
[34:10] Steve Yeah, very cool. Now you get to work on a very cool topic. Like I said, I appreciate you coming on because, you know, as I said, as a college sports fan watching NIL, I had a sense of what it was, but after talking with you, I realized I don’t really know much of anything uh, about NIL. So, I appreciate you coming on. Uh, if anybody wants to get a hold of you, if they want to reach out more to you and talk to you potentially about working on cases or just talk to you about NIL litigation or learn more about NIL, how—how can they reach you?
[34:40] Jonathan Yeah, so you can just uh, reach out to me at uh, jwohlwend@bradley.com. Um, or you can just give me a call at uh—sorry, I’ve got to look—205, it’s 205-521-8349. That’s it.
[34:59] Steve Well, I appreciate it, Jonathan. We’ll probably have you on later as—as these litigation keeps rolling out, I’m sure I want to be checking in with you and probably have you on a future podcast to talk to us more about what’s going on in the college sports and in NIL. So, appreciate you.
[35:14] Jonathan Sounds great. Hopefully I’ll be wearing my uh, national championship shirt uh, if we—if we come on after the—after the season ends.
[35:23] Steve Yeah, be hanging the big Tennessee flag. I’ll just be completely all orange.
[35:25] Jonathan It’ll be a banner back here, it’ll take up the whole space.
[35:32] Steve Yeah, there you go. All right, so as I—as always, I appreciate the listeners. Thanks for—for tuning in. You know, greatly appreciate everybody who comes on and listens to it. You know, this is kind of the main reason why we do it is because we love to be able to give out information to listeners. Appreciate all the feedback that I get, you know, keep it coming on that. As always, go to courtroomsciences.com, all the other blogs, podcasts, papers, all of that is up there. Join us for another edition of the Litigation Psychology Podcast brought to you by Courtroom Sciences.
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