Since the early 2000s, Major League Soccer players in the U.S. have enjoyed contracts with better salaries, bonuses, and benefits such as fully-paid health insurance for all, thanks to the MLS Players Association, the first labor organization formed by MLS players.
As a labor and employment lawyer and the association’s general counsel, Eric Harrington ’07 negotiates collective bargaining agreements to “make sure all players are treated fairly—on and off the field.” Harrington also flexes his intellectual property and contract law muscles working on the association’s group marketing and licensing program, which helps players license use of their images, such as for trading cards and video games.
Harrington, who is based in Bethesda, Maryland, came to his current role from the National Education Association, where he served as senior counsel. Before that, he worked as a civil rights appellate lawyer at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and clerked on the 9th Circuit.
It was his experience as an activist in college, then a union organizer for seven years, that fanned his deep-seated passion to help others. Law professors played an integral role in shaping his character, he says.
We spoke with Harrington about his current work, the power of sports, his time at Texas Law, and his penchant for vacation planning.
You’ve been in your current role for the last three years. Going back in time, what key moments set the stage for your career?
I grew up in a working-class family in a manufacturing part of Western New York. My dad was a mechanic and had workplace injuries—he lost his hearing and has bad knees—things he was never fully compensated for. I saw up close how the system can churn people up and spit them out, especially working-class people.
I was the first person in my family to attend college. When I graduated with a degree in philosophy from Binghamton University, the AFL-CIO had just started its Organizing Institute, which trains organizers on how to help workers join a union. I ended up organizing people in the South and the West. I basically lived out of a suitcase for seven years. Organizing unites people to address collective challenges. At their best, labor unions empower members to build strength and solve shared issues. As a union organizer, I learned to bring people together, prioritize problems, and develop strategies for change—skills I now apply at the Players Association. The core driver of my life and professional career is helping people.
After organizing, you decided to attend law school. What motivated you to come to Texas Law? And what lessons did you take with you?
For many of us, the most important thing is family. The second is our job. Making that right and fair has really become my life’s work. I saw the law as a tool to help people who are being treated unfairly.
Texas Law made me think like a lawyer. It instilled intellectual habits crucial for effective legal advocacy and applicable beyond law: seeing all sides of a dispute, identifying ambiguities, communicating clearly, applying rules to novel problems, critically assessing facts and witness accounts, carefully reading texts, and acting ethically. As my career progressed, the character of professors and classmates has stuck with me. I learned how to be a person who leads with character and integrity. At Texas Law, I was learning those lessons even if I didn’t know it as I was going through school. Professors like Jordan Steiker, Mechele Dickerson, David Anderson, and many others were role models. It’s less about what I learned, but who I learned to be.
You’ve got a big job supporting the hundreds of players across MLS’s 30 teams in the U.S. and Canada. What issues do you address day-to-day?
We bargain with MLS over wages, hours, and working conditions like any other union. Health and safety are really important because every professional athlete gets injured eventually in some way. We also help to ensure that players have more control over their careers by deciding who and where they play for, and that when a move does happen expenses are covered. In the last few years, we’ve seen more intra-player discrimination, or racial slurs, used by some players against others. So we developed a first-of-its-kind restorative practice approach to preventing and remedying racial and other discrimination within the league. It’s a model that could be used with other sports and replicated around the world.
Those are significant issues to address. Meanwhile, how have you and the MLS Players Association had to adapt as soccer has expanded in the U.S.?
In the U.S., professional soccer really grew from the top down as opposed to Europe, which was bottom-up—people got together informally to play, then clubs played, then associations formed. So, we didn’t have this organic system in the U.S. MLS instead developed a top-down model of tight cost and labor controls. At the MLSPA, we’ve been working to dismantle those controls. There have been efforts to build a better system around it for a long time, but now the pace is accelerating.
Soccer in the U.S. right now is such an exciting place to be because we’re building the system as we speak. And in 2026, we’ll have the largest sporting event in human history, the World Cup, in the U.S.
Sports are super entertaining, but you’ve also said they can be really powerful. What do you mean by that?
Sports is more than entertainment. It’s a real gift to our communities and the world. Every culture has had some kind of athletic competition, and there’s just something magical about humans competing against each other. Sport can be, and is, a unifying force. There’s real value to the work the athletes do.
You must watch a ton of soccer—do you have a favorite team? Or maybe your hobby is playing soccer yourself?
I don’t have a favorite team because I root for all players. I know them as human beings, whereas it can be easy for fans to think of them more like video game avatars.
I don’t play soccer, but my kids do, so I’m a soccer dad. As for hobbies, I always plan our family trip, it’s one of my releases. This spring we’re going to Japan, and I’m really excited. On trips, if you want to experience the culture, go to a sporting event. When we go to Japan, we’re going to go to a baseball game, and it will tell us just as much about modern Japan as a temple in Kyoto will.