Ryan Kirkpatrick rejoins Susman Godfrey after spending four years as General Counsel and Senior Managing Director of McCourt Global, an alternative asset management firm.  In that role, Ryan served as head of the New York office where he oversaw all legal affairs of the firm and its business verticals, including a $1 billion commercial real estate development joint venture, MG Sports & Media (which owns the LA Marathon and co-owns Global Champions Tour and Global Champions League), and MG Capital (owner of a private direct lender and registered investment adviser).

Ryan’s experience at McCourt equipped him with a deep understanding of how to successfully manage and direct a wide variety of multi-national legal matters. Ryan obtained or negotiated billions of dollars in judgments, settlements, and transactions while at McCourt.  Working on both the plaintiff and defense sides, Ryan also developed a deep understanding of and how to successfully leverage litigation (and the threat of it) to accomplish financial and business objectives while at the same time managing and mitigating the financial and operational costs of litigation to a business. For example, while serving as director of Global Champions League, Ryan initiated an EU competition law action against Fédération Equestre International, the international governing body for equestrian sports.  After obtaining a landmark preliminary injunction that was upheld by the Brussels Court of Appeals—and has implications for all international sports federations—Ryan helped negotiate a highly favorable settlement with the FEI. As of 2017, Global Champions League has now sold/licensed 18 team franchises and holds 15 events around the world.  This use of EU competition law to effect worldwide relief for a client was reminiscent of one of Ryan’s first cases at Susman Godfrey, where he and Steve Susman guided start-up mainframe manufacturer Platform Solutions, Inc. to a $200 million buy-out by IBM following years of contentious of antitrust, patent infringement, and copyright infringement proceedings in both the Southern District of New York and the European Commission.

Ryan was first elected to the Susman Godfrey partnership in 2011. At the time, he was representing Frank McCourt and the Los Angeles Dodgers in connection with Mr. McCourt’s highly-publicized divorce and the team’s bankruptcy. This three-year representation culminated in a favorable settlement of the divorce, the sale of the Dodgers to Guggenheim Partners for $2.15 billion—the highest amount ever paid for a professional sports franchise—and the formation of a $550 million joint venture with affiliates of Guggenheim Partners.  Ryan has been interviewed and quoted by numerous media outlets regarding the case, including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, the Los Angeles Time, ESPN, the National Law Journal, the Associated Press, KABC, and KTLA.  Shortly following the sale, Mr. McCourt asked Ryan to help lead McCourt Global.

Ryan was named among Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Litigators in America in 2022. Prior to his time at Susman Godfrey, Kirkpatrick clerked for the Hon. Ruggero J. Aldisert of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.