Hannah McLean

I am a consultant with our Sydney office, working in the Media, Entertainment & Sports group.

I advise and represent international and national sporting organisations on all aspects of sports governance and regulation. My particular expertise is in integrity and disciplinary regulation, governance and data protection.

A childhood playing sport instilled a deep love and a belief in its power for good — promoting physical and mental wellbeing, inspiring personal achievement, and creating communities. I've therefore been extremely fortunate to spend my entire professional life working within leading national and international sporting organisations obtaining an intimate understanding of, and advising on, how sport is governed to protect its privileged standing in society.

I am passionate about integrity in sport, and have fifteen years' experience across anti-doping (both human and equine), anti-corruption, and safeguarding – developing policy and drafting regulations, through to prosecuting breaches and sitting on panels.

As senior in-house counsel with a leading international federation, I obtained in-depth experience with the operations, regulation and commercialisation of sporting competitions. I advised on a range of governance and regulatory issues, including a major constitutional review, national team eligibility disputes, national sporting organisation governance issues, and the creation of fair regulatory processes. I also advised on major commercial projects at a strategic level, ensuring that issues related to governance, reputation and integrity were factored in (such as major external financing to leading competitions and data rights deals).

I also have extensive experience of data privacy in sport. I established a wide-ranging data protection compliance programme in preparation for implementation of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. A detailed technical legal knowledge of data protection laws plus comprehensive understanding of the essential but varied data flows within global sport, enabled me to advise with credibility and influence. Senior leadership trusted that compliance was being managed, and internal colleagues knew we had fully considered their data processing needs before advising or setting policy.

I know what life is like in a sports organisation — multiple stakeholder groups, many and varied objectives, a complex governance landscape, commercial challenges, immovable sporting competition deadlines, and constant public attention. I am adept at working directly with all levels of leadership to understand their objectives and needs, then advise with credibility. I can analyse and balance multiple and differing views to identify solutions. I am pragmatic and realistic, and judge risks and priorities to ensure resource is spent efficiently and effectively. I am quick to advise in a crisis, seeing an issue from all angles to work collaboratively to reach a consensus way forward.

• Leading the creation of the International Tennis Federation's first Code of Ethics establishing ethical standards for the ITF's leaders, including establishing the independent Ethics Commission, and implementing the Code in the 2019 ITF Presidential elections.
• Advising the ITF on a historic allegation of abuse of power against a senior tennis official, in particular ensuring procedural fairness.
• Advising the ITF as lead internal counsel on major restructures of the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup, based on new external private equity financing. In particular, providing strategic advice and innovation on governance models and protection of sporting and regulatory rights.
• Advising on a major redevelopment of the British Horseracing Authority's Equine Anti-Doping Rules to ensure effective regulation of doping substances from a horse's birth, requiring substantial stakeholder consultation on the extension of regulatory jurisdiction to the breeding industry and the development of new procedures for widespread hair testing.

• CAS 2010/A/2230 International Wheelchair Basketball Federation v UK Anti-Doping & Simon Gibbs, where UK Anti-Doping successfully defended lower tier decisions which held that the player had not satisfied his onus in attempting to establish that he had been spiked.
• Ilie Nastase v ITF, where the ITF successfully defended an appeal against first-instance decision that found Mr Nastase (the Romanian team captain in the Fed Cup) in breach of various welfare offences. The case was high-profile, given Mr Nastase was a Grand Slam winning tennis player, and his misconduct was racist, sexist and resulted in the Romanian team being defaulted from a match.
• CAS 2018/A/5987 Bernard Giudicelli v. ITF, where Mr Giudicelli's appeal was partially upheld. The CAS confirmed the ITF's decision that Mr Giudicelli's position as Board member was vacated. In and around this case, I advised the ITF on changes to its Constitution to address the objective in a more proportionate way.