Lawyer finds steady work with USC athletes
Neal Lourie doesn’t come off the bench for the Gamecocks — he approaches it.
In his own way, Lourie is helping out the home team.
He’s been the go-to guy for USC athletes who find themselves facing more than a technical foul or a lane violation.
This year alone, the 39-year-old Columbia lawyer has represented four USC student-athletes arrested on criminal charges, including quarterbacks Blake Mitchell and Stephen Garcia.
Lourie has delivered:
• Charges against Mitchell were dropped in September by a Five Points bouncer who accused the quarterback of punching him in the head for refusing to admit underage girls into Pavlov’s bar.
• In March, a driving with a suspended license charge was dropped against basketball player Tre’ Kelley, who had unpaid speeding tickets.
• In 2005, Lourie helped craft a plea agreement for receiver David Smith, who pleaded guilty to third-degree burglary after breaking into a former girlfriend’s house and allegedly choking her. Smith was sentenced to one year probation and ordered to pay $550 for kicking out a police cruiser’s rear window during his arrest.
• Stephen Garcia is waiting to see if he can avoid sentencing by acceptance into a pre-trial intervention program. He is accused, in separate incidents, of public drunkenness and malicious injury to personal property for keying a car.
Lourie, who decorates his office with framed newspaper articles about his days in court with USC players, said it’s business as usual when he has an athlete referred to him.
“They’ve got to drink from the same cup of justice as everyone else,” said Lourie, who graduated from Tulane University and the USC School of Law. “We treat them like every other client.”
SPREADING THE WORD
A season ticket holder for USC football, basketball and baseball, Lourie traces his popularity among athletes to Mitchell, who worked as a courier for the Lourie Law Firm in the summer of 2004.
“We knew Blake; he called me, and I was there for him,” said Lourie, whose firm does the bulk of its work on civil cases and workers’ compensation claims.
From there, he guesses, his reputation has spread by word of mouth. The university does not refer players to any lawyer.
“We don’t give them a list of attorneys,” said athletics director Eric Hyman. “I don’t know anybody that does.”
Lately, Lourie’s association with arrested USC athletes has put him in a media spotlight previously trained on other members of his family:
• His late father, Isadore, was a champion of civil rights and represented Richland County for 28 years as a state representative and state senator.
• His older brother, Joel, has been a state representative and state senator since 1999.
Lourie works in the same Pickens Street law office his father opened in 1956. Father and son practiced together for two years before Isadore Lourie’s death in 2003.
Civil cases might be his bread and butter, but Lourie’s recent high-profile clients have him being stopped at athletics events by fans. Many people wish him good luck or call out, “Those athletes are keeping you busy.”
A JOB TO DO
Handling student-athlete cases presents more challenges than a typical case, said Columbia lawyer Joe McCulloch, who represented USC athletes in the 1980s, as well as the university during an investigation beginning in 1988 into steroid use among football players.
Student-athletes are under a microscope, he said, and a good lawyer manages not only the case but publicity and the emotional well-being of the client.
“It frequently makes the lawyer work harder to get the thing back to be dealt with in a way proportionate to other students,” McCulloch said. “You have to anticipate that the incident the student is involved in is going to be the subject of lots of gossip.”
It’s imperative to make a fee agreement with athletes and collect, he said, otherwise a lawyer risks running afoul of NCAA regulations.
Still, athletes’ lawyers often are accused of getting them undeserved breaks.
In an e-mail to Lourie and to sports writers across the state, Thomas Dukes of Lexington calls Lourie a magician.
“As a USC (School of Law) graduate and having worked for Barney Giese, Richland County solicitor and son of former head football coach Warren Giese, wink, wink, you get these guys off with either charges dropped or (pre-trial intervention),” Dukes wrote.
Dukes, a Clemson fan and graduate, asked whether other arrested USC students receive the same treatment.
“It seems like every time an athlete gets in trouble they call Neal Lourie,” Dukes said. “I think they’re getting special treatment, yeah.”
Lourie said he brushes those comments off.
“I’m doing my job,” he said. “I’m not doing anything unethical.”
As McCulloch noted, part of that job is counseling the student athletes.
“We’re also talking about these kids’ overall lives and not just this specific incident,” Lourie said. “I sort of explain to them their careers are at stake.”
His latest USC client is former freshman pitcher Nick Fuller, a third-round pick of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the 2006 Major League Baseball draft.
Fuller was dismissed from the USC baseball team in March after being charged with six felony counts stemming from the alleged theft of $9,600 of property — including three desktop computers and $3,100 in cash — from an assistant coach’s locker.
His next hearing is in August.
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