Weil and Covington Collaborate for Investigation of Abuse in Women's Soccer

Weil and Covington Collaborate for Investigation of Abuse in Women's Soccer

December 15, 2022, The American Lawyer

After a 14-month joint investigation, Covington and Weil released a report into the abuse, harassment and bullying toward players in professional women’s soccer league.

The Covington team representing the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) was led by Amanda Kramer, a partner in its institutional culture and social responsibility practice and lead counsel for the NWSL, as well as partner Mona Patel, and of counsel Jason Criss. In addition to the three lead lawyers, more than a dozen Covington attorneys from four offices across the country also worked on the matter.

In an interview, Amanda said the joint investigative team spent “thousands of hours” on the matter, with the firms conducting hundreds of interviews.

“The investigation is unprecedented in professional sports, both in terms of its scope—it covers the entire history of the NWSL and all of its clubs—and in that it is a review commissioned by both the NWSL and the NWSLPA,” Covington added.

“We left no stone unturned in fulfilling our mandate to investigate not only all incidents of misconduct from the league’s founding through the present but also to assess the cultural and systemic issues that impact the prevention, detection and handling of that misconduct,” Amanda said.

As far as the next steps, Mona said they expect the league will “have work to do in terms of processing the report, analyzing the findings and developing an approach to the recommendations we’ve included in the report.”

“We expect that the investigative team can support those efforts to the extent that is necessary,” Mona said.

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