Arizona Cardinals Name Raiders Ex-Top Lawyer as General Counsel

The NFL’s Arizona Cardinals have promoted veteran labor and employment lawyer Kevin Manara to the job of general counsel.

The Cardinals hired Manara as special counsel last summer after he spent a year as general counsel for the Las Vegas Raiders, which he joined from the NFL’s headquarters in New York. Manara was promoted in January, per his LinkedIn profile, and he’s now a member of the team’s executive staff, according to the front office page of the Cardinals website.

Manara takes over the role held by David Koeninger, who is now listed on the team’s website as its chief legal officer. Koeniger, a former corporate partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in San Francisco, has spent the past 15 years as general counsel for the Cardinals.

The transition comes as the Cardinals seek to sort out some legal and employment issues. In 2022, two former Cardinals coaches joined a high-profile racial discrimination lawsuit filed against the league and several teams by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores. The NFL is appealing a federal court ruling last year denying the league’s bid to arbitrate that case.

Last year the NFL appointed Jeffrey Mishkin, a retired partner and former head of the sports practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, to arbitrate a dispute between the Cardinals and former vice president of player personnel Terry McDonough, who has brought defamation and invasion of privacy claims against the club and its owner Michael Bidwill.

Manara, Koeninger, and media contacts for the Cardinals didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Manara joined the NFL in 2008 after serving as a labor and employment associate at Proskauer Rose, which since that year has been outside counsel to the league on labor matters. During his more than a decade working for the league, Manara rose to the level of vice president of labor relations and policy.

After joining the Raiders in 2021, Manara left the following year as the team overhauled its management by hiring a new club president in Sandra Douglass Morgan, a former of counsel at Covington & Burling, and general counsel in Justin Carley. Covington is another longtime NFL legal adviser.

The Athletic reported in October that the Cardinals had a fear-based workplace culture under the leadership of Bidwill, a former federal prosecutor who previously was the team’s general counsel prior to inheriting control of the club in 2019. The Cardinals also settled an NFL tampering investigation last year related to the hiring of their current head coach, Jonathan Gannon.

Bears, Bills

The Cardinals aren’t alone among NFL franchises turning over their law department leadership. The Chicago Bears announced in January that they would not bring back Cliff Stein, a former player agent who spent more than two decades as the club’s general counsel.

Stein, in a statement posted to LinkedIn, thanked the Bears and their ownership for his time with the team. His exit follows by a year the Bears’ hiring of Kevin Warren—a former of counsel Greenberg Traurig lawyer who had been commissioner of the Big Ten Conference—as team president.

The Buffalo Bills, which parted ways with their longtime general counsel in 2022, found themselves in the market again for a new top lawyer when Kathryn D’Angelo was fired late last year for reportedly engaging in a personal relationship with another team executive. The Bills initially appointed veteran football operations adviser James Overdorf as their interim legal chief.

Terrence Gilbride, a former chair of the college and university and public-private partnership practice at Buffalo’s Hodgson Russ, joined the Bills as their new top lawyer shortly before year’s end. Gilbride had previously handled legal matters for the Bills in private practice. The Bills also hired a new assistant general counsel in Toni Cannady, most recently an associate at Hogan Lovells.

Gridiron Roundup

Other teams making legal moves include:

Dallas Cowboys: The team hired Stephanie Galvin, a senior director of business and legal affairs at stadium services provider Legends Hospitality Management LLC, last month as a senior associate counsel. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones owns part of Legends Hospitality. Galvin succeeds former Cowboys associate counsel Sally Bradley, who is now chief operating officer and general counsel at North Woodmere Capital Investments LLC, a family office.

Minnesota Vikings: Ronika Carter, a former Akerman associate, joined the team as senior director of legal affairs after spending nearly the past three years as a corporate counsel for the Women’s Tennis Association. The Vikings hired Carter ahead of the club’s associate counsel Ebony Harris joining the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers as an associate general counsel in January.

New York Giants: In January, William Heller, the longtime legal chief for the team, returned to private practice by joining New Jersey’s Genova Burns as of counsel. Heller retired from the Giants last year and was succeeded as the club’s general counsel by former McCarter & English partner Richard Hernandez.

Atlanta Falcons: AMB Sports + Entertainment, a company that owns the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and Major League Soccer’s Atlanta United FC, hired former Mintz Levin associate Taylor Carter as an assistant counsel in December. Carter spent the almost the past year working for NBCUniversal Media LLC.

United Football League: A new spring football league formed through the merger of the XFL and USFL has tapped Wendy Bass, a longtime former NBCUniversal lawyer, to be its head of business operations and administration. Bass was most recently chief business and legal officer for the XFL, prior versions of which went bust two decades apart. The UFL will start play March 30.