Huw Roberts

Huw Roberts is an Of Counsel in the Sports Group in London. His primary practice area is Sports Law, and he is a regulatory and dispute resolution specialist with over 15 years' experience working for some of the biggest names in the global sports market.

He specialises in regulatory and disciplinary work for national and international federations and other organisations in the global sports community. He worked for many years as Legal Counsel to World Athletics (formerly the International Association of Athletics Federations) and, since joining the firm in 2015, has continued to assist the sport in a number of different areas.

In 2015–2016, he advised on a ground-breaking programme of wide-ranging governance reform, including re-drafting World Athletics' constitution and establishing an independent Athletics Integrity Unit and Disciplinary Tribunal. Four years on, the reforms have been widely praised, and World Athletics and the Athletics Integrity Unit are now seen as a benchmark of governance best practice within the international sporting community. As a result of his governance work for World Athletics, he was asked to sit as an expert advising the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on its own governance reform programme, with particular focus on introducing greater independence to the organisation's decision-making functions.

Having spent many years of his career working in-house in sport, he feels uniquely placed to understand the needs of clients, the challenges they face in implementing governance reform and, crucially, what it takes to ensure that any reforms put in place have a lasting impact. He still advises the Athletics Integrity Unit on a full-time basis and has recently assisted the firm in advising on the implementation of similar structures in other sports.

Over the years, he has sat on a number of expert commissions and working groups established by World Athletics, the International Olympic Committee, WADA, the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), SportAccord, the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), UK Sport and London 2012.