Campbell Law Spotlight: Hannah Ingall’s ’24

Campbell Law’s Hannah Ingalls ‘24 greatest passion has always been sports. As an NCAA athlete, sports are certainly a huge part of her story. But the true driving force in Ingalls’ life has always been a desire to serve as an advocate. Hard work, determination and an unwavering commitment to her goals allowed her to successfully the combine the two. Upon graduation, Ingalls will be moving to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she will begin as Staff Counsel with the SkateSafe Division of the U.S. Olympic Figure Skating Team.
 
While sports have always been a big part of her life, law school was not originally part of the plan. Ingalls grew up playing lacrosse in St. Augustine, Florida. She continued her love of the sport by playing women’s lacrosse at Wingate University, where in just three years she earned a B.S. in Sports Management and a minor in Legal Studies in 2021. Ingalls originally attended Wingate University as a biology major intending to pursue pre-med. She quickly changed her mind to sports management where she took a media law class that she deeply enjoyed and connected with. This course inspired Ingalls to take a sports law class, add a legal studies minor, and eventually pursue law school.
 
When deciding where to attend law school, Campbell Law was her number one choice because of its bar passage rate. As a student at Campbell, Ingalls has been an active leader on campus, serving as President of Women in Law, the Outreach Coordinator for Sports Entertainment Law Society, a Justice on Honor Court, and the head Barbri representative.
 
During her 1L summer, Ingalls completed two internships that gave her exposure to legal work for athletes. She worked first with the Law Offices of Mark E. Sawicki in Boca Raton, Florida, and got to assist on athlete contract negotiations. During her second summer internship at Raymond’s Representation, Ingalls assisted with representation of student athletes in a NIL capacity. During her time at these internships, Ingalls noticed athletes with smaller followings were not getting representation. Driven by her passion to advocate for athletes, Ingalls started her own sports agency and got licensed in Florida. She represented five athletes over the summer in a NIL capacity, getting the athletes contracts with marketing departments of various brands and negotiating brand rep deals for them.
 
During her 2L summer, Ingalls began her time with the U.S. Olympic Figure Skating Team. A small part of Ingalls’ work involved dealing with contracts for music rights and licensing for the figure skating music. Ingalls was also involved in claims related to sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of minor athletes. Her work included conducting investigations of complaints, calling witnesses, drafting reports and working with the committee at large to make decisions on what happened to the accused.  Over the course of her time as an intern with the U.S. Olympic Figure Skating Team, Ingalls primary project involved rewriting the entire ‘SkateSafe Code of Conduct.’ Ingalls was assigned this project because of her law school experience with the Student Body Association (SBA) rewriting the Student Bar Association of Campbell University Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law Constitution. 
 
In order to achieve her career goals, Ingalls remained dedicated. Throughout law school she networked, researched, and took advantage of every opportunity and available resource to prepare herself for her chosen path. When opportunities for her to get a foothold in her very niche area of interest presented themselves, she was ready. She met with the Career Center once a semester for guidance. She began networking with sports law attorneys and seeing where those calls led her.  This all led her to a website specifically for sports law attorneys (teamworkonline.com) where she found job postings. Ingalls would look on the website every single day for new job postings and apply to whatever interested her. Eventually, she was able to secure a 2L internship with the U.S. Olympic Figure Skating Team that ultimately led to her post-graduate job.
 
Ingalls offers the following advice for students hoping to find a legal career in a niche area. “The key is to latch onto your goal and get creative with your ways of getting there,” she explained. “It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of no’s. You have to get comfortable with the rejection and still pick up the phone and call five people a day to get your name known.”