Senior counsel Jimmie McMillian takes The Lawyer beyond the Greatest Spectacle in Racing

Jimmie McMillian wasn’t born in Indiana, but he’s all in on the state’s love of motorsports.

A Chicago native, McMillian credits former colleagues with introducing him to the Indianapolis 500, the world’s largest single-day sporting event. Since 2016, McMillian has been entrenched in the culture of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, acting as senior corporate counsel and recently tacking on even more responsibility with Penske Entertainment, which owns IMS. The two roles allow him to lead both legal operations at the speedway and interact face-to-face with fans who attend one of IndyCar’s many events throughout the year.

This year, the motorsports hype will grow even bigger: IndyCar is taking to the streets of Washington, D.C., this August to celebrate the United States of America’s 250th anniversary with the Freedom 250 Grand Prix.

Despite the big names and even bigger crowds, McMillian relishes in the day-to-day interactions he has with fellow fans, from Indy 500’s most-seasoned spectators to wide-eyed newbies seeing the bricks for the first time.

“One of the things I’m always excited about in my heart are when we bring little kids — I call them third graders with oversized T-shirts and headsets — nobody says no to a third grader with an oversized T-shirt and a headset on, and the smiles and the laughter and the joy they have when they come to the track makes it all worthwhile,” McMillian said.

As the month of May prepares to rev its engine, McMillian joined The Indiana Lawyer to talk about his work at IMS, the race day tradition he cherishes and what he’s most looking forward to this racing season.

Can you start by explaining what your roles are at Penske Entertainment?

I am vice president of external affairs and senior corporate counsel, so I have a multitude of roles.

With my legal job, about 80% of what I do is our contract work, particularly our sponsorships for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and NTT IndyCar Series.

I manage all of our litigation, along with our outside counsel and our insurance providers. We work very collaboratively on things like intellectual property projects, facilities projects, real estate projects, parts and manufacturing services and sanction agreements, which are some of the things that fall in some of my colleagues’ buckets of responsibilities. I also do music agreements for our concerts and our music artists. I also help with our events here at IMS and do our event agreements for the events that happen here at IMS.

Some people would say that the law of motorsports and motorsports law is the law of everything.

How did you get into the role?

I started riding motorcycles and doing community service projects. I’m the president of one of the largest motorcycle clubs in the state, 317 Riders Motorcycle Club, and I actually knocked on the door of IMS while I was at Barnes [& Thornburg] and said, “Could I do a community service event for the Christamore House?” And they asked me how many bikes it was going to be, and I said 200, and it ended up being like 8,000.

That spurred my mind that maybe this is something that I want to do, and that I could try to merge my practice of law with my passion for cars and bikes and racing, and that was the impetus of it. I started going to racing events, and I started to get clients, and that’s how I got introduced to it.

I have not had one bad second at work since May 2, 2016, when I joined the track.

Was working at IMS always in your purview?

No, absolutely not. … I became a fan of racing when I was working at Firestone in Bloomington and the guys in the shop brought me to my first race. From that first race, I became hooked. But never thought I would work here, never thought about working in sports. It came as a total surprise to me.

Is there such a thing as a “typical” day in your role? If so, what does it look like?

It depends on if we’re open to the public or not or if it’s the month of May.

We also are the promoters for our Arlington, Texas, race, our Nashville, Tennessee, race, our Long Beach race, and we are also putting on a race in Washington, D.C., this year. So, it’s responding to questions, inquiries or drafting agreements that might be in my inbox from those parties related to those races. Usually the start of my day is figuring out who has contracts that need to be turned and sent back.

We also do a large amount of risk management. Sometimes, if we just had an event, it’s analyzing whether there’s been an incident of some sort that has occurred and then trying to assess the nature of that incident and how we can resolve it. It’s trying to figure out how we can make sure our fans are safe and having a safe and enjoyable experience at our races. It’s about working with our partners throughout the organization, from our folks who work in ticketing to our folks that work in parking and safety and security, but helping and really being an asset and making sure we put on a great event for all of our fans to enjoy. On the legal side, that’s certainly a big part of what my day looks like.

On the vice president side, it’s promoting the race but working on the business side of putting on great events and working with our business team. [I’m] stepping out of the legal role and jumping over to the business side to do things to make sure our company grows and that our drivers and our teams are successful and our fans are having a great experience.

How does putting on the Indy 500 differ from other IndyCar events across the country?

Typically, our other events are one weekend events … so the volume of work that you’re going to do for them, the scope of the work, is going to be a lot smaller than what we do here at IMS and the different levels that we do it at.

I also work with a number of community events. Every year, I work with different nonprofit organizations, schools, different organizations and groups, to bring them to the track. Particularly, I plan and coordinate career programming for kids from all ages, from third graders in oversized T shirts with big headphones to college students and graduate students who come out here and learn about how to pursue careers, not just in motor sports, but in sports in general.

I work with our head of human resources. We work together on an internship program that helps expose our interns not only to the things we do here, but also with other entities across sports. We have a partnership with the Pacers, the NCAA, the Colts, the [Indianapolis] Indians, Lucas Oil Raceway, to take our interns to those environments and talk to leaders in those spaces about how to pursue jobs and careers there.

What’s a common misconception people have about your job?

Most people, I think, would be surprised to know how active we are. There are certainly a lot of folks … they think about one race and they go, “What do you do when you’re not working on the 500?” I think they would be surprised at the number of events that we have here. I think we’re on track for something like 70% of the year, we have cars on the track in
some form.

When we’re not racing here in the month of May, we’re racing in places like Toronto and Phoenix and Detroit, and those races all have needs, as well. So I think people would be really surprised at the scope beyond the 500, that there’s a lot of things that we are doing continuously.

Tell me about the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in Washington, D.C., this year.

The biggest thing that’s unique is it’s in D.C. with the backdrop of all the monuments and all of our history of Washington, D.C., will be on full display with some of the fastest cars on Earth and some of the best drivers on Earth. It’s just such a special honor for our sport, our state, to be represented in that way on a major stage.

Our concept for the 500, “United We Race,” this is something that you’re going to see throughout the month of May. The pride that we have as Americans and the pride that we have in our sport are tied and intertwined. I think that race will be part of a continuation of a thing that we’ve had all year, certainly that we’ll have during the month of May, of being proud Americans and proud citizens of the United States of America.

What does your role look like in the weeks leading up to the Indy 500?

In a lot of ways, by the time May hits, we’re not working on May. … We’re a step ahead on the legal side. For me personally, because I have these other roles, I’m superengaged in the other job, which is continuing to be out in the community and promoting the race, promoting people’s participation, educating the community, visiting schools, hosting groups here, doing programming for kids, doing tours, you name it.

We have a number of business events that happen at the track during the month of May, and a lot of what I do is try to welcome those groups and make sure they have what they need while they’re here at the track and making sure they have a wonderful time.

What does your legal role look like in the weeks and months following the 500?

Even before the race starts, we are working with our security team and our local, national and regional safety partners, which are far reaching — we work with them to make sure that we’re trying to put on the safest event we can.

Afterwards, we’re assessing if anyone requires our support and attention and trying to alleviate any incidents that happened, and we try to do that quickly and efficiently, because obviously, our goal is to make sure that all of our fans have the best time that they can possibly have.

We’re always hoping that we’re not engaged in lawsuits, like any business, but if that happens, then we work with our insurance providers, we work with our outside counsel.

How many people are part of your legal team? Do you outsource legal counsel?

We’re a team of five — three lawyers, a paralegal and our secretary, and outside counsel from Ice Miller.•