Australian sports lawyer Mel Mallam is about to pack her bags and head for Switzerland. She’s recently accepted a position as an in-house lawyer with the Federation Internationale de Football Association – better known as FIFA – the world governing body for association football which has 208 member confederations around the world.

Mallam will join FIFA’s 280 staff, among them a number of other in-house lawyers.

A sports enthusiast since childhood, Mallam studied a combined Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Human Movement Science at Southern Cross University, graduating in 2002.

She started out working in corporate and commercial law and insolvency litigation in Brisbane, before moving to Canberra to take up the role of in-house counsel for Touch Football Australia. In this role she was heavily involved in the transition of touch football from the traditional federated model to a nationally administered unitary model.

According to Mallam, the profile of sports law has grown considerably since she began in the field. “When I started out a lot of people were wondering what ‘sports law’ was all about, but now it seems that all the most publicised legal cases in the media have to do with sporting stars or sporting issues,” she said.

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