Miami Marlins Promote Former Cahill Associate to Top Legal Job

Major League Baseball teams are making waves with big money deals and trades as the sport’s annual winter meeting concluded this week in Dallas. Among the personnel moves were some key legal appointments.

The Miami Marlins announced Dec. 9 that Benjamin Lash, a former associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, has been promoted to general counsel of the team. He will oversee all legal matters for the Marlins and loanDepot Park, the club’s roughly 37,000-seat retractable roof stadium.

Lash didn’t respond to a request for comment about his new role, which comes more than two years after general counsel Ashwin Krishnan left the Marlins to take a legal and business affairs job at Betr Holdings Inc., a sports-betting startup co-founded by boxer and social media star Jake Paul.

The Marlins hired Lash, a Miami native, as an associate counsel in 2021 and elevated him to senior counsel after Krishnan left the team. For more than two years Lash has been the de facto lead in-house lawyer for the Marlins, which have been owned since 2017 by financier Bruce Sherman.

Krishnan, no stranger to working his way up through the professional sports ranks, said his former colleague “is incredibly deserving” of his new role.

“He’s essentially been performing all of the responsibilities since my departure,” Krishnan said. “He’s an excellent attorney, has great judgment and interpersonal skills, and will continue to very capably lead the Marlins legal department.”

The Marlins said in a statement that Lash’s duties include the “drafting, reviewing, and negotiating of business- and baseball-related contracts,” as well as providing “legal guidance and counsel” to their executive leadership team. LoanDepot Inc., a mortgage lender, sponsored the Marlins’ ballpark in 2021.

Lash’s legal group includes staff counsel Aaron Caputo, a former college ballplayer who joined the club in late 2022, and Ryan Nichols, an assistant staff counsel who came aboard in July. Nichols most recently was a legal fellow for the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets.

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom advised Sherman and his ownership group on their $1.2 billion buy of the Marlins in 2017. Valuations for US pro sports teams have continued to climb.

Wachtell represented Stephen Ross, owner of the National Football League’s Miami Dolphins, on his sale this week of a 13% stake in the team, its home field Hard Rock Stadium, and Formula One’s Miami Grand Prix. The transaction values the Dolphins—acquired by Ross for $1 billion in 2009—at $8.3 billion.

Around the Horn

The Marlins aren’t alone among MLB teams making legal moves. Baseball’s winter meetings—usually convened over four days in December—are a time when many of the league’s 30 franchises make changes to their player rosters and front office staff ahead of the start of a new season.

One team in the market for a general counsel is the Baltimore Orioles, who were sold this year to a group led by lawyer-turned-private equity titan David Rubenstein. The Orioles said in October they’re looking to hire a half-dozen executives, including a legal chief. (Michael Bloomberg, owner of Bloomberg Law parent Bloomberg Industry Group, is part of Rubenstein’s ownership.)

The Atlanta Braves, which last year became MLB’s only publicly traded team, welcomed aboard a new deputy general counsel last month in Hunter Knowles, who most recently held the same title at SiteOne Landscape Supply Inc. The Braves, whose longtime legal chief is Gregory Heller, have one of the league’s larger legal staffs at more than a half-dozen employees.

The Cleveland Guardians hired Weil, Gotshal & Manges public company associate Shira Barron in October as a deputy general counsel. Barron’s move to the Guardians—who last year elevated former deputy legal chief Maxwell Kosman to the top job—marks a return to her native northeast Ohio. The Guardians are also owned by a former attorney in cable mogul Paul Dolan.

The Detroit Tigers, whose ownership is taking part in the Motor City’s real estate boom, hired Diligent Corp. legal counsel Michael Bacallao as an assistant general counsel over the summer. Bacallao now works for Ilitch Sports + Entertainment, which also owns the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings.