When it comes to litigation, Braza plays ball

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In 1981, brand-new litigator Mary K. Braza’s opposing counsel continually referred to her as “little lady” during a deposition. Braza decided to play his game — drawing attention to his advanced age, just as he had drawn attention to her gender. She started asking the deponent, his client, every few minutes if his lawyer needed to take a restroom break, and she also asked him to speak up so his lawyer could hear. It didn’t take long for the “little lady” references to stop.

If only that lawyer could see her now.

Braza has not only survived, but thrived in male-dominated professional environments.

She’s a veteran litigator; a longtime partner in the state’s largest law firm, Foley & Lardner LLP; and a nationally-recognized leader in sports law.

Braza serves as outside counsel to Major League Baseball in a wide variety of issues, including strategic planning, employment, tax, technology and consulting agreements, licensing, trademark and antitrust litigation.

Some of her accomplishments include counseling the relocation of the Montréal Expos to Washington D.C. — a process that spanned several years, and encompassed “a domino effect of litigation,” as well as myriad transactions. These days, the Washington Nationals, as the team is now known, is a successful baseball club, at least in terms of its stable and savvy business operations.

In addition, in 2000, Braza was involved in Major League Baseball’s successful consolidation of League and Club interactive media rights, and the formation of MLB Advanced Media, L.P., the League’s Internet business.

“It was a great exposure to burgeoning technology, and a whole different side of the practice of law than what I’d experienced before,” she says.

Braza says it was quite by accident that she found herself in Milwaukee and in sports law.

She moved to Milwaukee in 1982 to join Foley, and to be reunited with her law school sweetheart, James Braza, of Davis & Kuelthau S.C. (They recently celebrated their 26th anniversary.)

As for sports law, in the early 1990s, she was paired with Foley attorney Robert A. DuPuy on a number of matters involving Major League Baseball. DuPuy, who has since been named president/CEO of Major League Baseball, mentored her both as a litigator and a sports lawyer. When he left the firm in 1998, she was the natural choice to take over the representation, along with law partner James T. McKeown.

Braza, a longtime member of the firm’s Women’s Network, as well of one of its creators, has mentored a number of other women lawyers at Foley, including Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Lisa Neubauer and Milwaukee Brewers vice-president/general counsel Marti Wronski.

— Jane Pribek