Antitrust Practice Area Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm a 2L summering at a firm with a very strong antitrust practice group (think A&P, Cleary, GDC). Anyone have any experience/opinions on antitrust wrt career progression, exit opps, day-to-day work, etc? I'm worried it's too niche/limiting compared to something more broad or generic.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a 2L summering at a firm with a very strong antitrust practice group (think A&P, Cleary, GDC). Anyone have any experience/opinions on antitrust wrt career progression, exit opps, day-to-day work, etc? I'm worried it's too niche/limiting compared to something more broad or generic.

Some thoughts. Source: I'm a midlevel in the antitrust group at a antitrust-focused office at a biglaw firm with a very highly regarded antitrust practice.

Cases and discovery issues are huge, think million+ documents--that creates a lot of scutt-work for juniors. They can also drag--cartel cases can go for over a decade, and there are partners here who are still working cases they were working on as juniors. On the flip side, being an integral part of an important ongoing antitrust case can push you over the top to the partnership (assuming you're otherwise competitive).

It's not all lit--plenty of AT lawyers work on deals, which involves working on getting US and EU approvals for mergers. Again, for a junior, your experience with this may be reviewing docs for responding to DOJ second requests. Practically, that means doc review, but with sometimes intense deadlines. I couldn't handle the unpredictable schedule of deal work, but deal lawyers seem to have the best chance at moving in-house. Antitrust related exit opps on the lit side seem generally limited to government--FTC, DOJ, and their state analogues.

The litigation side of antitrust is highly expert-driven. You're going to have to be at least conversant with the economics if you want to progress in this field. Expert reports and depos are a big deal.

Because of their size, antitrust matters are uniquely within the skillset of biglaw firms. Simply put, handling them requires tons of bodies. As a result, your antitrust experience is not going to be highly transferable to smaller firms unless you move plaintiff-side. On the other hand, antitrust matters tend to be high-stakes for clients, and (in my experience) clients are less fussy about paying their bills than in other practice areas. As an associate, that's translated to no one ever questioning my efficiency or expenses. There is surely idiosyncratic variation with different clients, however, and of course I actually try to be efficient (but expense literally anything I possibly can).

I sort of just landed in the antitrust group here. My TL;DR is that the issues are interesting, but discovery and organizing docs to prove up issues is pretty tedious.

[20181989]

Would the anon above please PM me?