Schulz finds his swing with baseball deals

Listen to this article

Baseball players who jump from team to team often are labeled journeymen to emphasize their nomadic tendencies.

But for Milwaukee transactional attorney Kevin Schulz, of Foley & Lardner LLP, the term is a compliment.

Schulz, 37, has worked on the sales of Major League Baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago Cubs, Texas Rangers and, most recently, Los Angeles Dodgers, since 2005.

“Hopefully,” he said, “I’m not done.”

The transactions often are time sensitive and asset specific, which Schulz said can make the deals extremely stressful. But he said the work is rewarding because of the public interest and personal satisfaction of giving a team a fresh start.

In the case of the Dodgers, which was sold in May to a group of investors represented by Foley, it was a $2 billion sale that came together in about one year.

“After we closed, I was like, ‘Wow, I just worked on the largest transaction for a professional sports franchise ever,’” Schulz said. “That’s pretty cool.”

Schulz said his roots as a sports fan never conflict with duties to his client. During the final week before the Dodgers sale closed, Schulz said, the closest he got to a game was seeing Dodger Stadium outside the window of the conference room.

“It doesn’t end up being that hard to kind of put aside the fan part of it,” he said, “because you are there to do a job, and no one is expecting you to be sitting there watching players or something like that.”

Wisconsin Law Journal: If you could develop one CLE course for credit, what would it be about?

Kevin Schulz: There might be a fairly limited audience for this, but I really enjoy doing merger and acquisition sports deals, so I would be interested in developing a CLE on buying or selling a professional sports franchise.

WLJ: What was your least favorite course in law school and why?

Schulz: Going into the class, I did not think I would like criminal law, but I ended up not minding it. Other than that, no other classes come to mind.

WLJ: What do you consider your biggest achievement to date and why?

Schulz: I hope this does not sound cliché, but I believe my family is my greatest achievement. I love watching my 4-year-old daughter grow and seeing her various accomplishments along the way. We have another child on the way in September, so I am very excited for that, as well.

WLJ: What is the one luxury item you cannot live without?

Schulz: My smart phone, if that can still be considered a luxury item these days.

WLJ: What do you miss most about your childhood?

Schulz: A total carefree existence focused almost exclusively on fun.

WLJ: What is the first concert you went to?

Schulz: I believe it was James Taylor, which is weird because I was not even that familiar with his music at the time and, as a teenager, I was much younger than most of the other concertgoers. One of my friends had an extra ticket and invited me.

WLJ: If you could trade places with someone for a day, who would it be and why?

Schulz: Probably Jack Swarbrick, athletic director at the University of Notre Dame, so that I could have a behind-the-scenes look at Notre Dame’s athletic program and appreciate all that his job entails.

WLJ: If you could be a superhero, who would it be and why?

Schulz: I am not a huge superhero guy, but it would probably be Superman because, at least in the original movie, he was able to turn back time by flying around the Earth in the opposite direction of its rotation.

WLJ: If you hadn’t become a lawyer, what career would you have chosen?

Schulz: Probably an investment banker or something else in the financial world. I was a finance major in college, and I really liked the analytical and mathematical aspects of that, like valuation methodologies and other financial metrics.