The Jock

Vered Yakovee has harbored a lifelong passion for sports, whether it was playing basketball in high school, coaching high school hoops, or competing in outrigger canoe races in the Pacific Ocean. When she decided to become a lawyer, it seemed natural to marry her pastime with her vocation.

Though it’s tough to break into sports law, Yakovee proved that she can persevere on professional and athletic playing fields. She networked like crazy, asking anyone who would chat about how they got into sports law. She joined the Sports Lawyers Association and volunteered her legal services for the Southern California Outrigger Racing Association.

Over time she built up enough experience to launch her own practice. The Law Offices of Vered N. Yakovee, which opened in 2008, operates at the intersection of insurance and sports. Yakovee focuses on insurance and risk management, advising sports entities on their insurance coverage and representing policyholders in their insurance disputes.

Yakovee takes great pride in applying her insurance expertise to the sports arena, especially helping clients nail down coverage to protect their business and athletes. Yakovee’s caseload is varied, ranging from drafting participation contracts for a major collegiate bowl game to helping a minor league baseball league evaluate and restructure its insurance coverage. She has also worked on an NBA team’s corporate sponsorship program.

“It’s very diverse, and I really like that I can add value for my clients,” she says. “In litigated insurance, one word can shift the risk from one party to another and it can come down to so much money. I like bringing my unique expertise in sports and insurance to the table.”

Yakovee also coaches the next generation of sports attorneys at her alma mater, University of Southern California Gould School of Law, and serves as faculty adviser to the USC Sports Law Society. She’s on the governing committee of the ABA forum on the entertainment and sports industries and is editor-in-chief of its journal, Entertainment and Sports Lawyer. Plus she recently returned from a semester of teaching international business law at Dimitris Perrotis College in Thessaloniki, Greece, where she coached the men’s basketball team.