UM Law Students Take Learning to London

UM law developed a program abroad where students can take a three-credit course in London

The London Olympics have gathered the world's top athletic talents for 16 days of record-busting competition.

To pull it all off, you don't just need athletes, you also need lawyers.

The University of Miami Law School has turned London into an Olympic-sized classroom.

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UM law student Alicia Lopiccolo is never regretful of her summer in school. One minute, she's laughing, the next, she's leery.

“We're presented with the opportunity to study abroad this summer and the program involved the 2012 Olympics,” Lopiccolo said. “So, that is something that i just couldn't pass up.”

About two dozen Miami law students couldn't either.

They made the trip of more than 4,000 miles from Coral Gables to London to study how the Olympics, and the law, work together.

The short answer: in more ways than you think.

Complete Olympic Coverage

“There's a lot,” said UM student Mary Stevens. “There's how the athletes have to act, there's setting up the venues, there's sponsorships, there's intellectual property.”

Key to Olympic law: the International Olympic Committee charter, which governs the games, and the brand.

For example, it's powerful enough to make a London business with the word Olympic in its name, change it temporarily, while the games are in town.

“The IOC approached them and said, during this period, you have to take off the O, and just call it 'lympic Café,” said Claire Zovko, a graduate assistant.

“When we go around London, and we see the Olympic rings on a product, or we see some kind of formation of it, we're always like, oh, these people paid for the licensing rights, or, oh, look at them, how they got around it,” said UM law student Michael Akhavan.

The Olympic and Paralympic games are multi-billion dollar undertakings, with, seemingly, as many stakeholders.
A perfect test for any lawyer, which brings us to part of their final exam.

“What we may do is take some real events that have happened here over the course of the Olympic Games and weave them into a hypothetical,” said UM professor and course founder Jill Pilgrim.

A marathon of a written essay in which these up-and-coming attorneys hope to come away with the gold - their three course credits.

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