Courtesy New Jersey Newsroom

(March 9, 2011) The old cliché about sports broadcasting is that it’s not work, it’s fun. One of the most prominent broadcasters in the country can attest to that because he knows what work is.

Jay Bilas, the ESPN color commentator alongside Sean McDonough and Bill Raftery this week for the Big East Tournament, is still a practicing lawyer. Besides traveling six days a week during the basketball season he works for the firm Moore and Van Allen, PLLC as an Of Counsel. He earned his law degree from Duke University, working on it while also on Mike Krzyzewski’s staff as an assistant coach.

After nine years as a full time trial attorney, he has spent the past eight-plus years in his current position, working on more “discrete tasks.”

“There may be some assignments that I do,” says Bilas. “Some cases that I consult on. I used to have a bunch of cases on my desk that were open at any given time. I can’t do that anymore. There’s no way I can carry a practice full-time like I used to. I have stepped away from that. Of counsels are usually older. I’m starting to get up there. I’d be at the prime of my potential earning years right now.”

Understandably, his job with ESPN takes away from time spent performing for the Charlotte-based firm. Though the basketball season may come to an end in early April, Bilas’ involvement with the sport never does so there is no transition from broadcasting to law once the season ends. It’s just a matter of traveling less.

With the obvious time constraints of both jobs, it necessitated a move to his current position. It was a difficult decision that Bilas still considers.

“I couldn’t practice full-time and do the job I wanted to in broadcasting,” he says. “You have to make choices and I made a choice. I still don’t know if it’s the right one. But I had to step away from my law practice and spend more time doing this. It’s been fun. The beauty of this is the way I’ve done it is if I decide it gets to the point where I’m not going to be able to practice anymore…If I ever get out of broadcasting I can go right back into my law practice. That’s a nice thing.”

While practicing law certainly isn’t as fun as broadcasting — and he definitely doesn’t miss the stress of the job — he keeps practicing law because it’s still something he enjoys.

“Because I like it,” says Bilas. “I’m trained as a lawyer. I think I work for a great law firm. I decided that I never want to be just one thing. I’m a full time broadcaster but I’ve maintained a great association with my firm and I plan to do so as long as they’ll have me.”

Bilas’ profile as highly visible and successful college basketball broadcaster doesn’t help him with his law practice but it is only growing larger thanks to his entry into the social media world.

While legal briefs can go on for 20 pages, Bilas has become a hit in 140 characters.

Bilas started tweeting after a recommendation by his wife and says that anything he tweets is like what he says off-air. The only difference, he notes sheepisly, is the lack of profanity being used. Twitter allows him to show off the more humorous part of his personality that does not always have a chance to come out on ESPN.

In a short amount of time Bilas has gained over 45,000 followers and won people over with his joking, knowledgeable or sarcastic tweets. He comments on college basketball, non sequiturs and makes fun of his broadcast partners, Digger Phelps and Raftery.

Especially funny and attention grabbing are those digs at his co-workers. Commenting on their lack of tech savvy or Raftery’s proclivity for being a good quote, that alone is enough to make him a must follow. Monday night he tweeted out a log of Raftery’s conversation at dinner.

Before going on air Tuesday Bias tweeted: “Bill Raftery to me: “I hear you’ve been tweeting about me. What the hell does that mean?””

“Neither one of them use any sort of technological device or sophisticated telephone,” he says on the phone and unrestricted by characters. “I don’t think they read it but they know about it. Everything I’ve written out there we’ve said to each other. So it’s not a surprise.”

Raftery doesn’t mind Bilas’ jabs, he finds them funny. It is just another example of his broadcast partner’s humor.

“I get out a kick out of it,” said Raftery. “He’s got a great personality. He’s one of the funniest guys in the world.”

But he does more than just jest. Bilas has commented on the issues affecting the sport articulately and sharply, showing the merits of the medium as a podium to raise profound points.

Despite his widely-hailed success, Bilas still hasn’t gotten all of this Twitter thing down. He just learned how to put up a picture and more notably, he follows no one. There’s an explanation for that: he’s not quite sure yet how it all works.

“I don’t understand that part,” said Bilas. “I have an idea of how that works but I was joking around one day with my daughter and she said ‘Hey, you don’t follow anybody. Well, I said who am I supposed to follow?”

In fact, he is still working on figuring out the medium’s full capacity.

“Some people tell me they get news off of it,” said Bilas. “They go to their page and there will be links and they’ll follow that way and other people communicate with friends that way. I’m still a telephone guy. If I don’t talk to somebody on the telephone I don’t trust it. I haven’t really sat down and said ‘OK, what do I really want to get out of this?’ My wife said, hey, listen there might be some people who want to hear what you think and you ought to try it. So I’ve been trying it but I really need to take some time and think about it before I start doing anything else. When I go to the Twitter page all I see is the empty box at the top.

“I just kind of mess around with it, I still don’t understand it. I still don’t know if I’m going to keep doing it. It’s been something I’m still learning about.”

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