Why law firm bills for Kansas Athletics' NCAA defense were addressed to KU Medical Center
LAWRENCE — Each outside law firm Kansas Athletics used while defending the NCAA infractions case that concerned its men’s basketball and football programs, which was resolved in 2023, addressed invoices to certain locations.
Among those, the location used by the firm Hogan Lovells stood out. It listed the University of Kansas KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas, for invoices that had to do with NCAA proceedings, and for invoices from July 2020 to November 2023 billed a little more than $5.125 million. But according to a KU Athletics spokesperson, the athletics department assumed all costs related to defending the NCAA infractions case.
Context: Did KU pay all $10M in legal fees for NCAA infractions case out of athletics funds?
There’s a reason invoices were addressed to the KU Medical Center.
Megan Walawender, currently a deputy athletics director for compliance and legal affairs for KU Athletics, is also a senior associate general counsel in the university’s general counsel’s office. Walawender’s responsibilities with the university in recent years mean there are multiple places she has spent work time, resulting in multiple addresses where she could be reached by firms for this matter. KU’s general counsel’s office has multiple locations, including the one that is listed on the invoices for Hogan Lovells.
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Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Why bills for NCAA legal defense were addressed to KU Medical Center
