Donald Woodard

Donald Woodard is a nationally recognized transactional lawyer representing talent, athletes and companies in the entertainment and sports industries. Woodard’s impressive legal career was spent primarily practicing law with AMLAW 100 law firms. He served as Deputy General Counsel at USA Track & Field until his departure in January 2021 to start Carter + Woodard.  Woodard maintains a well-respected music practice focusing on identifying and placing talent and negotiating recording agreements, music publishing agreements and other music industry contracts.  He is a trusted advisor to corporate clients such as Rev Racing, a NASCAR-supported development racing team for female and minority drivers, USA Track & Field, Greenwood Bank and along with Ms. Carter, Central City Productions (television producers of the Stellar Awards, Black Music Honors, Black History Honors and other African American family friendly programming).He is an outspoken advocate fighting for the right of all Georgia high school athletes to profit off their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL).  He is widely known as a thought leader with respect to NIL in college and high school sports nationally. An influential dealmaker, Woodard specializes in negotiating and structuring complex commercial transactions for businesses, serving as outside general counsel to private companies, and advising individuals in all facets of their careers in the entertainment, music, and sports industries.

Woodard has had many accomplishments over the past year in sports and music.   He advises star national champion LSU women’s basketball players Angel Reese aka “The Bayou Barbie” and Flau’jae Johnson, the first women’s basketball player to secure a sneaker deal with Puma and a recording contract with Roc Nation.  He has negotiated millions of dollars in Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals on their behalf including Coach, Papa John’s commercial, Pepsi, Amazon, Savage Fenty, Mercedes Benz, Zoa Energy Drink, Overtime Elite, Leaf Trading Cards and Starry soda commercial where Angel appeared alongside Zion Williamson and Karl Antony-Townes.  Angel was the first collegiate women’s basketball player to appear in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.   Woodard also negotiated Alabama Running Back Justice Haynes’ agreement with Alabama’s collective and advises the record-breaking projected #1 football player in the class of 2026, Quarterback Julian “Ju Ju” Lewis, in all matters involving NIL opportunities. 

Additionally, Woodard represented Summer Walker in connection with the release of her sophomore album, “Still Over It,” which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200. Her album broke the record for most album streams in a single day by a female artist on Apple Music and broke their previous record for largest streaming debut-week for a female R&B artist.  He also structured Summer’s deal for her breakout One Night In Atlanta Orchestra Performance.  Woodard negotiated the largest "drill" deal of the past year for recording artists "41" (TaTa, Jenn Carter and Kyle Richh) with Republic Records and renegotiated a multi-million-dollar record deal for NLE Choppa with Warner Records and publishing deal with Sony-ATV.  He also represented OutKast’s Big Boi in a new television series, “RV There Yet,” which airs on the A&E TV Network and follows him as he and his team renovate custom RVs for celebrities.

Beyond his legal accomplishments, Woodard is widely respected by his peers as a leader within the legal community. He is among an elite group of lawyers selected as a Georgia Super Lawyer, Top Music Lawyer by Billboard in 2022 and 2023 and Variety’s 2023 Legal Impact honorees list. He has been recognized as one of the 100 most influential professionals in entertainment by Rolling Out. He is a former member of the Board of the Black Entertainment and Sports Lawyers Association and Board of Governors for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Woodard is a frequent speaker on the lecture circuit. He is a leading expert on NIL in college sports who was the featured speaker in a one on one interview at The Gathering Spot on the topic of NIL -  “Making Money Moves: Name, Image and Likeness in College Sports and was recently interviewed by ESPN in the story “The Prep QB Phenom and Million-Dollar NIL Question”.  He is a former member of the Board of the Black Entertainment and Sports Lawyers Association and Board of Governors for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (the Grammy’s).  Donald previously served as Chairman of the Black Women Film Network, the first man to ever serve in such a capacity.  He was also the first African American federal judicial clerk on the Northern District of Georgia’s Bankruptcy Court.

Woodard grew up in Temple Hills, Maryland.  He is a graduate of Morehouse College and Indiana University-Maurer School of Law, Bloomington.