Tom Brady’s Lawyers Step In to Help ‘Navigate’ Post-NFL Career

Tom Brady will count on Latham & Watkins and an array of in-house lawyers and outside counsel to transition from his NFL career to ventures involving films, fashion, health and wellness, and non-fungible tokens.

Latham, which kept close ties to Brady during his football days, will continue to counsel him in his post-playing career, said Jonathan West, a firm partner based in Century City, Calif.

“It has been exciting to be part of the team advising Tom on his varied business interests and enterprises to date,” West said in a statement. “We look forward to helping him navigate the next chapter in his life.”

Brady-related businesses include the Brady clothing brand that went live in stores last month, health and wellness company TB12 Inc., and LFT NFTs Corp., owner of the non-fungible token company Autograph, which raised $170 million in January.

“I’m fortunate to have co-founded incredible companies,” Brady said in a Feb. 1 statement on Instagram announcing his retirement. While he’s “excited” to help build them, “exactly what my days will look like will be a work-in-progress,” Brady said.

Latham is known for its sports industry practice. West, Brady’s primary outside counsel at the law firm, was part of a high-profile sports and entertainment team that joined Latham in 2014 from O’Melveny & Myers.

Public records show Latham’s handled trademark work for TB12, which is based on Brady’s strict training and exercise regimen, and the firm advised on the formation of 199 Productions LLC, the veteran signal caller’s film production company.

TB12 takes its name from Brady’s initials and the number he wore during his playing days, while 199 Productions marks where he was taken—the 199th pick of the 2000 NFL Draft—before becoming the only player in NFL history to win seven Super Bowls.

Yee & Dubin

Brady in his Instagram post thanked his agents Donald Yee and Stephen Dubin, who are name partners at Pasadena, Calif.-based Yee & Dubin.

Yee & Dubin helped Brady manage the fallout from Deflategate, a controversy that reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and led to Brady being suspended for the first four games of the 2016 NFL season. Yee didn’t respond to a request for comment.

And two other Brady-related entities, Autograph and sports media company Religion of Sports, have recently recruited in-house legal chiefs in Jonathan Gottlieb and Benjamin Mauceri, respectively. Bloomberg Law reported their hires in August.

TEB Capital Management Inc., Brady’s investment firm, is behind some of the trademark filings and businesses formed by its famous benefactor.

Brady’s father, Thomas Brady Sr., is a former insurance agent who is now a chairman and principal at Thomas Brady & Associates, a high-end life insurance brokerage that parted ways with its former general counsel in 2016.

TB12

TB12, the health and wellness company formed by Brady and his longtime trainer, Alex Guerrero, was organized in Delaware in 2013 and in Massachusetts the following year, according to public records. TB12 became incorporated in Massachusetts in 2019.

The business was initially structured as a limited liability company with the help of Robyn Glaser, an attorney and senior vice president of business affairs for the Kraft Group. Glaser has said she’s a proponent of the TB12 fitness program.

TB12 acquired VitalFit Nutrition, a startup that sold plant-based fitness recovery products, in January 2020.

The Kraft Group is the Foxborough, Mass.-based holding company of New England Patriots owner and billionaire Robert Kraft. Brady spent 20 years with the Patriots, winning six Super Bowls, before ending his career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and winning his final Super Bowl in 2021.

TB12 Foundation

Shannon Zollo, chair of the mergers and acquisitions and private equity practice at Boston-based Nutter McClennen & Fish, is an outside director on the board of the TB12 Foundation, a nonprofit co-founded by Brady and Guerrero in 2015 to serve underprivileged athletes and military personnel.

Zollo said he doesn’t perform any legal services for the foundation, but that he has served on the board with Brady and Guerrero for about five years.

“I am excited for Tom, Alex, and the organization as they now embark into the next phase of their respective careers,” Zollo said in a statement.

Kenneth Harvey, a former private client and trusts and estates partner at Holland & Knight in Boston, also serves on the board of the TB12 Foundation.

Harvey, who has been a solo practitioner for more than a decade, didn’t respond to a request for comment about his relationship with Brady.

Flores Lawsuit

Brady announced his retirement the same day Brian Flores filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and three teams—the Denver Broncos, New York Giants, and Miami Dolphins.

Flores, who was head coach of the Dolphins until he was fired in January, spent roughly a decade as an assistant coach for the Patriots.

Flores’ lawsuit claimed that the owner of the Dolphins, former tax lawyer-turned-real estate billionaire Stephen Ross, pressured him two years ago to recruit an unnamed “prominent quarterback” in violation of NFL tampering rules.

That quarterback, per reporting by Dolphins beat writer Joe Schad of the Palm Beach Post, was Brady.