We are deeply saddened that our longtime friend, colleague, and partner Paul Tagliabue passed away on November 10, 2025.
A native of Jersey City, Paul graduated from Georgetown University and New York University School of Law, and after clerking for a federal judge spent three years as a policy analyst in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense. From 1969 to 1989, Paul practiced at Covington, becoming a partner in 1974. During his initial 20-year tenure at the firm, Paul maintained a wide-ranging and highly successful litigation practice, co-chaired the hiring committee, and served on the firm’s management committee.
Given that the National Football League had grown to rely heavily on Paul for counsel and litigation support during his Covington career, it was unsurprising that the League chose Paul to serve as Commissioner of the NFL, where he served with great distinction from 1989 to 2006. Paul’s tenure was marked by a new era of labor peace, dramatically enhanced broadcast revenues, and expansion of the League with four new franchises domestically and the addition of an international footprint. Among his more consequential individual decisions, Paul decided to postpone the games scheduled for the week following 9/11, persuaded the Saints to remain in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and successfully advocated to move the Super Bowl from Arizona to California after Arizona refused to recognize a Martin Luther King, Jr. state holiday. In recognition of his many achievements, Paul was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and inducted in 2021.
Following Paul’s tenure as Commissioner, he returned to the firm as senior counsel and continued in that capacity until last year. During this second phase of his career at the firm, Paul focused on numerous pro bono matters, principally in the areas of voting rights, election integrity, and Electoral College reform. He also served on Georgetown University’s Board of Directors for a dozen years and as its chair from 2009 to 2015. Paul’s and his wife Chan’s extensive philanthropic work at Georgetown included endowing need-based scholarships, the campus LGBTQ Resource Center, and the Paul J. and Chandler M. Tagliabue Distinguished Professorship in Interfaith Studies and Dialogue.
Paul leaves behind an outsized legacy of professional accomplishment and personal decency. But to many at the firm, Paul was first and foremost -- and will always be remembered as -- a treasured friend and mentor.
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