Colorado Law Fields New Name, Image and Likeness Practicum

Last year, as the definition of amateur athletics was being rewritten in the courts and revised in university handbooks through the creation of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) guidelines, Colorado Law’s inaugural NIL practicum began offering 2Ls and 3Ls experience tackling these issues right here in Boulder. In spring 2025, the school launched a practicum intended for aspiring lawyers who dreamed about practicing their passion for sports after passing the bar, and it was headed by someone who knows exactly how they feel: Adjunct Professor Leigh Augustine.

Adjunct Professor Leigh Augustine

“I got laughed at in law school,” Augustine explained, “because I told everyone I was going to do sports and entertainment in Colorado, and they’re like, if you’re gonna stay here, you’re gonna do DUIs and corporate law like the rest of us.”

Undaunted, he pitched himself as an up-and-coming sports attorney at DU Law where his mentor, John Coombe, a retired partner from Holland and Hart, told him that he ought to learn intellectual property while pursuing his dream. That was the key. Augustine, who earned his undergraduate degree in business from CU Boulder, realized that “sports is really a conglomeration of contracts, business law, antitrust, copyrights, trademarks and licensing—with the biggest slice, in my opinion, being intellectual property (IP).”

He would go on to build sports law practices at Moye White (now Fennemore Craig) and Sherman & Howard (now Taft Stettinius & Hollister), but fresh out of law school he hung out his shingle doing primarily trademarks and copyrights while assembling a roster of young Olympic skiers and professional lacrosse players as clients.

“I still love working with these lesser-known athletes and influencers because they need someone looking out for them—companies often overstep their boundaries with regard to name-image-likeness [endorsement] deals,” Augustine said. “With lacrosse players, for example, the average playing salary is $25,000. So if I can get this guy an extra $2,000 for an NIL, that’s huge to them.” He smiled, “Sometimes it feels like pro bono work, but I also get to be Jerry Maguire for some very thankful clients, so it’s great work.”

Unbeknownst to Augustine, Colorado Law students had been advocating for a course on NIL for almost two years. Back in September 2023, a group of law students, including Tad Elliott '25 and Katrina Chavez '26, approached Dean Lolita Buckner Inniss. They “got the ball rolling,” according to Associate Dean for Instructional Development Amy Bauer.

Dean Inniss had “already been thinking about the opportunities NIL presented for legal education and immediately saw the alignment,” Bauer explained. 

Following the students’ pitch, Dean Inniss was enthusiastic and on board to form a practicum.

In medicine and the sciences, a practicum refers to a class in which students learn by doing, and the same applies in law. The administration’s goal was to give students firsthand experience dealing with real-life Name, Image and Likeness issues under the supervision of an experienced professor.

This coincided with the arrival of head football coach Deion Sanders, who launched CU athletics into the stratosphere of national conversation, creating opportunities for many student athletes beyond football players. The time was right. All that was missing was someone to teach the course.

Enter Leigh Augustine, who gave a talk on campus about opportunities in sports law in spring 2024, electrifying his audience. Bauer approached him to see if he’d be interested in teaching at his undergraduate alma mater, and he couldn’t wait.

Augustine’s “deep expertise and enthusiasm for NIL law was the spark we needed to launch the practicum,” Bauer said.

Eleven students enrolled in the section in January 2025 after taking Augustine’s fall 2024 course on Sports and Media Law, and their reviews have been enthusiastic. “I joined the practicum knowing that it was going to be the first semester of it running,” said Ursula Davy '25. “So I knew there were going to be growing pains and kind of just getting your feet wet. The fact that I still got to work on a really hands-on project and got to have client communication, and just even do a little bit of lawyering, has been so helpful.”

The practicum was organized around both client outreach and student collaboration, emphasizing teamwork. “We actually put real contracts up on the screen in class,” said Tyson Agla '26. “And we examined them figuring out ‘What red flags does everybody see?’ ‘What do you think we should work on?’ Stuff like that. And so everybody got to see the process of how an experienced attorney would go through it, and then we made suggestions to everybody and went through and made all the adjustments.”

Augustine summed up his approach to the practicum this way: “I was going to make sure that they rolled up their sleeves and got busy with real- life matters and got to actually help people.” 

Name, Image & Likeness Practicum students in spring 2025.

Abbey Shea '16, assistant athletic director of Name, Image and Likeness for the University of Colorado Athletics Department and Colorado Law alumna, said, “I knew this was going to be an interesting time for the students to have eyes on what’s happening, given all the court cases [around NIL]. There was a gap between student athletes who have agents and full teams behind them and those who don’t. After talking with Amy and Leigh, I was pretty confident there would be some population who’d at least want to give it a go.”

A handful of CU student-athletes, as well as some professional pickle-ballers, a 14-year-old tennis player hoping to go pro whose father went to CU, and other aspiring talents filled out the practicum’s freshman class of clients. “We learned that most student-athlete NIL deals at CU get inked in the fall with the arrival of new students, so the course shifted to the fall for the 2025-26 school year,” Augustine explained. By May, it was fully enrolled with eager students.

“I was impressed with how the students met the challenge,” Shea said. “I can’t speak for how often new practicums come up, but starting something from nothing is hard work. That was a challenge that they took on. Walking up to a table of 10 football players and being like, ‘Can I talk to you about the law?’ can be intimidating, but I think they did that.”

Practicum student Matt VanWert '26 echoed the hard work that launching this program took but also stresses how thrilling it was. “Professor Augustine works very hard for this. When clients come in, it's exciting. We all work hard. It's really exciting to be part of the start of this program.”

Shea counsels that “the more you do something, the more it’s ingrained.” She believes that the more student athletes know that the practicum exists and offers resources that can help them, the more they’ll tap into it, and for that reason she said, “I hope this practicum becomes an ongoing thing."

Augustine said, “I teach so I can give back some knowledge to people and have them in turn go out and make a difference in the world. I can't change the world, but I can change the corner of the world that I live in, and the people who pass through it. I really enjoy working with students and the level of enthusiasm they bring. It gives me life. It gives me hope that the next set of lawyers are going to be a great set of attorneys who make a difference in the world.”

He spent all summer counting the days for the new practicum to get underway, and that next set of great student-attorneys are already putting their passion into practice.

Q&A: Meet a Colorado Law Alumna on the Frontlines of NIL

Abbey Shea '16 grew up a big CU fan. Her dad and grandfather played basketball for CU, and she grew up coming to campus, going to games, and rooting for the Buffs. She started working in the compliance department at CU Athletics her 2L summer and has never looked back. She now serves as assistant athletic director in charge of Name, Image and Likeness.

Abbey Shea '16, far left

What’s the best part of your job?

The interaction with the student-athletes. NIL enables student-athletes to explore and embrace their identity outside of sport, as often it is their personal interests that are more valuable to brands. Assisting student-athletes throughout the execution of an NIL deal and experiencing them develop professional skills (public speaking, working on a production set, coming up with thoughtful & creative social media deliverables) is extremely rewarding.

What skills did you learn at Colorado Law that you use today?

Although I don’t work with “clients” in the traditional sense, my time at Colorado Law helped me develop the skill of distilling and ‘translating’ complex legalese into digestible education. Student-athletes are expected to understand, and comply with, many complex regulatory structures during their collegiate tenure–CU Law helped me learn how to make information accessible to a wide range of audiences. CU Law also taught me how to be a problem-solver - working in an industry that’s constantly evolving; we don’t often have black-and-white answers. There is rarely a rulebook I can consult. Instead, I use critical thinking, risk management, and resourcefulness to come to the best conclusion.

Do you have advice for law students or anyone else getting into NIL?

Be adaptable and resourceful - the best way to figure out how to solve a problem is just to try. Don’t let your ego get in the way of getting the job done. We often say that “Other Duties as Assigned” is the most important job description in our department. Being a “jack of all trades” who is willing to learn or do something that may not be strictly “your role” is how you develop knowledge and proficiency in diverse areas, which makes you an extremely valuable employee to any organization.

Sko’ Buffs, and thanks Abbey!