Players On the Move

In the wake of its $2.8 billion antitrust settlement that will fundamentally alter the economics of college sports, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has promoted General Counsel Scott Bearby, a 25-year veteran of the organization, to chief legal officer. Bearby has been the Indianapolis-based NCAA’s highest-paid lawyer since the departure of Chief Legal Officer Donald Remy in 2021. Bearby joined the NCAA in 1999, the year it relocated its headquarters from Overland Park, KS, to Indianapolis and has been general counsel since 2013. His compensation totaled $565,571 in the fiscal year that ended in August 2023, up from $474,883 a year earlier and $413,415 two years earlier, according to Internal Revenue Service filings. The NCAA also announced the promotion of Greg Pottorff to general counsel. He joined the organization in 2019 after eight years at the Indianapolis-based law firm Ice Miller and most recently was managing director of legal affairs and senior counsel for litigation and development. Remy had joined the organization as CLO in 2011 and took on the additional role of chief operating officer in 2019. He and the NCAA parted ways in July 2021 after negotiating a separation agreement that paid him $2.4 million in severance. Remy’s exit came a month after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the NCAA’s restrictions on education-related benefits for student-athletes violated federal antitrust laws. It was the latest in a long list of legal setbacks for the organization, including a court ruling in 2014 that NCAA rules barring athletes from earning income from their name, image or likeness were an unreasonable restraint on trade. U.S. District Senior Judge Claudia Wilken of the Northern District of California approved the $2.8 billion antitrust settlement in June 2025, writing that it “reflects compromises that were made in light of those legal precedents.” … Sue Underwald, who has decades of legal experience at some of the nation’s marquee media and entertainment companies, will serve as the first chief legal officer of Discovery Global. New York City-based Warner Bros. Discovery announced in June its plan to split into two publicly traded companies next year: Warner Bros. and Discovery Global. Warner Bros. will house the film and television studios, including HBO and HBO Max, while Discovery Global will encompass the company’s cable networks, including CNN and TNT, and the streaming service Discovery+. Underwald spent the first 17 years of her legal career at Dow Lohnes, a big player in communications law that merged into Cooley in 2014. She then spent five years at Scripts Networks Interactive, where she rose to senior vice president of business and legal affairs. She joined Discovery in 2018, serving as senior vice president of legal. She kept that title after Discovery and Warner had merged in 2022. A year later, the company promoted her to executive vice president. … Veteran diplomat and in-house attorney Jeffrey Bleich has joined the AI developer Anthropic as general counsel — a high-profile hire that comes as the company prepares to close a funding round that could bring in as much as $10 billion. Bleich will serve as a lieutenant to Anthropic legal chief Brian Israel. Anthropic brought Israel aboard as GC in October 2022, a year after its founding, and promoted him to chief legal officer last month. Bleich was special counsel to President Barack Obama during Obama’s first term and went on to serve as U.S. ambassador to Australia, a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson, group CEO of Dentons and chief legal and policy officer of Cruise, a GM-owned self-driving car business that shut down last year. … Jack Bair, the San Francisco Giants’ top lawyer for more than three decades and a key player in the storied history of the major-league baseball franchise, is passing the legal reins to his top deputy, Amy Tovar, but staying with the team in a new capacity as chief development officer. In that capacity, he’ll oversee development of Mission Park, a 38-acre mixed-use project unfolding just south of Oracle Park, where the Giants play their home games. Bair joined the Giants as director of legal in 1993. In 1996, the team upgraded his title to general counsel and a few years ago, it did so again, this time to chief legal officer. After joining the Giants, Bair had led efforts to turn their dream of building a new stadium to replace the antiquated Candlestick Park into a reality, with the new stadium opening in 2000. Tovar joined the Giants in 2016 as associate general counsel. The team promoted her to deputy general counsel in 2018 and general counsel in 2020. Earlier, she served four years as associate general counsel of the U.S. Department of Commerce during President Barack Obama’s administration. The Giants said that during her tenure with the club, she has played a leadership role in a number of key transactions, including the 20-year stadium naming-rights deal that Oracle signed in 2019. As CLO, Tovar will be responsible for legal operations, including corporate governance, media rights, labor and employment, litigation, intellectual property and real estate. … Womble Bond Dickinson adds a 20-lawyer team from the storied Nashville firm Neal & Harwell, a litigation boutique founded by famed Tennessee attorneys Aubrey Harwell Jr. and the late James Neal. The move preceded Neal & Harwell’s shutdown Aug. 31 after 54 years of being part of some of the highest-profile U.S. cases of the past half-century, including the defense of such high-profile clients as movie director John Landis in California following a deadly helicopter crash on the set of the film Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1982, and Elvis Presley’s physician George Nichopoulos in 1981 on charges of over-prescribing addictive drugs to Presley and singer Jerry Lee Lewis. Harwell Jr. left Neal & Harwell in May 2025, joining his son, crisis management lawyer Trey Harwell, and two associates in a move to Adams & Reese in Nashville. Womble (US) Chair and CEO Merrick Benn said the addition of the Neal & Harwell lawyer team adds decades of experience to its litigation and dispute resolution offerings in such areas as appellate and commercial disputes in the entertainment industry. The Womble firm opened its Nashville office in 2022. New Womble partners from Neal & Harwell include Bill Ramsey, who practiced with Neal & Harwell for parts of four decades focusing on civil and criminal litigation. He also is known for work with entertainment industry clients based in Nashville that include artists and music industry managers, advisers, agents, publishers and record labels. Ramsey said the move to Womble boosts his national entertainment and music practice from direct access to lawyers specializing in such areas as intellectual property, trademarks and copyright. He said he previously would need to hire outside counsel while at Neal & Harwell if a client needed those additional services.