William F. “Will” Stute

WASHINGTON, D.C. - William F. Stute leads the sports law practice at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where he is the national trial counsel for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. In that role, in November 2022, he and colleagues won a complete defense victory in a bellwether $55 million wrongful death CTE trial that was the first NCAA concussion lawsuit to reach a jury.

Growing up in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, Stute played rec league football and basketball. "We played with no helmets, and sure, I took a few hits, but never got a concussion," he said, adding that he is the son of a single mother and has held jobs since about age 14.

"There were no lawyers in the family. I became very interested in philosophy and took an undergraduate degree in that subject. I had some close friends in law school, and I came to see that the philosophy skill set helped analyze things on a deep level." At Mitchell Hamline School of Law, he graduated cum laude with a talent for mastering the technical details of a case, then looking beyond them to see how to frame the question in court.

"You want to persuade and resonate," Stute said. One aid to his courtroom technique is his skill as a guitar player, which emerged from the time he spent in the circle around the musician Prince at his home and studio, Paisley Park. "I dabble," Stute said. "You learn to modulate your tone and tenor; you learn how to present yourself."

Stute has been at Orrick since 2018 after working at several other firms, including McDermott Will & Emery and DLA Piper. He has been on the teaching faculty at Harvard Law School's Trial Advocacy Workshop since 2019. In his commercial law practice, he led the successful Orrick team that defended Gilead Sciences Inc. in a whistleblower case over claims of a drug marketing kickback scheme. U.S. ex rel. Chris Purcell et al. v. Gilead Sciences Inc., 2:17-cv-03523 (E.D. Penn., filed Aug. 7, 2017).

In mid-January, Stute was prepping for his next trial in a series of CTE wrongful death claims against the NCAA. The case he won in Los Angeles in November 2022 set the stage for how he'll defend the dozen or so he has ahead. "The facts of each case are different, but we'll be using some of the same experts," he said. The latest trial is Jennifer Finnerty v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, 49D01-1808- CT-033896 (Marion, Ind., Super. Ct., filed Aug. 1, 2018).

In the case of the death of former USC linebacker Matthew Gee, the stakes were high. Working with colleagues David Fuad and Bill Molinski, persuading jurors to return a complete defense verdict took a mix of lawyering skills and tact, as Stute sought to show there was no connection between Gee's deteriorating medical condition and death in his late forties and the actions the NCAA could have taken years earlier.

Stute asserted from his opening statement that the league followed head trauma prevention protocol during Gee's playing time and was not responsible for his subsequent poor health and drug and alcohol use. Alana Gee v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, 20STCV43627 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Nov. 12, 2020).

"Diplomacy and a vigorous defense were key," Stute said. "The NCAA is sympathetic when young men pass away early, it's tragic. But we believe strongly in our defenses."