Carol Couse

Carol heads up Mills & Reeve's Sports, Entertainment, and Media sector practice. Carol advises clients on regulatory and commercial issues in sport, media, and entertainment. She has expertise in football regulatory matters (player transfers, player contracts, immigration/work permit requirements).

Carol regularly advises high profile clients on commercial exploitation of image rights and other intellectual property rights and advises on reputation management issues. She also appears before dispute resolution forums at a domestic and international level, including before FIFA, UEFA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Carol's an accredited commercial and civil mediator and FIFA mediator. She understands the benefits of alternative dispute resolution for clients, where the need to resolve matters in a confidential and often timely way are paramount, preserving relationships where possible.

Carol also has experience of managing multi-million-pound high profile cases before the ordinary courts, working alongside our expert team of litigators.

Having previously worked in-house for Manchester United and the football agency Proactive, and having worked in sports, media and entertainment throughout her career, Carol has an in-depth knowledge of the industry. She's well placed to understand the needs and expectations of her clients. Carol presents pragmatic legal advice concisely, mindful of the commercial and career demands of her clients and related reputational and PR issues. 

Carol also heads our Latin America Desk and works closely with numerous international best friend law firms, so benefits from a wide network of global advisers. This enables her, where appropriate, to introduce lawyers in other jurisdictions, who are not only experts in their field, but who are likely to be the "best fit" for the client's needs.

As a Spanish speaker, Carol often advises clients in their mother tongue, which assists them in dealing with complex legal matters. Much of Carol's work is international in nature. Carol and her team successfully brought a claim for disability discrimination against Newcastle United for the Argentinian player Jonas Gutierrez, who gave the following client reference: "Carol gave me excellent professional support throughout the tribunal proceedings and dealt with matters in a sensitive way, explaining everything to me in Spanish which really made things easier."

Carol is regularly ranked as a Top 10 Global Thought Leader in Who's Who Legal. Legal 500 states: "Carol works tirelessly for clients, is a superb communicator, gives clear and practical advice, often on complex multi-jurisdictional matters." Chambers and Partners refers to the following client testimonial: "Her knowledge was immediately apparent and her advice was very sensible, commercial and industry specific and her drafting was good, clear and concise."