When the country’s top athletes are looking to compete with the major sports leagues or other organizations for breakthrough labor rights or contractual freedoms or more money, they often turn to battle-tested antitrust lawyer Jeffrey Kessler.

So it was no surprise last year when players for the U.S. women’s national soccer team—that of the superstar squad that would soon huff and puff and plow its way to another World Cup crown—sought out the energetic Brooklyn-born lawyer.