The Intricacies of Antitrust and What Makes it Cerebral
[00:00:00] Thanks for the helpful presentation. What about Antitrust? Is this considered Corporate or Litigation? What are the main upsides and downsides of choosing Antitrust concerning job stability, credentials needed, career progression and chances of making partner, among other aspects you may consider worth mentioning?
Okay. That's a great question. The thing about antitrust is a very serious, as a good way to put it branch of litigation and people that are good at Antitrust have to be very smart. The work happens most of the time in large law firms.
But the problem with the antitrust is it can be dependent on the administration. Sometimes, you'll have very pro-business administrations that would never think of bringing an antitrust, which would be, I don't want to get to Republicans versus Democrats, but you have different types of administration.
Different types of administrations will either be very interested in bringing the antitrust actions, her others won't. That's one of the things. So if it's an administration where there's not a lot of pressure in the justice department to bring any interest actions, then that can slow down Antitrust.
And so that's one of the negatives. The other thing is, the credentials for [00:01:00] defense Antitrust work tend to be pretty good credentials. A lot of antitrust work also happens at firms in DC, which is probably no surprise, but there are certainly at old large law firms all over. Your chances of making partner in Antitrust tends to be a little bit more difficult than it might be in other types of practice areas, if your timing is bad. Now, the thing that's good about Antitrust is if your timing is right, meaning you're doing it at the right time, then your chances can be very good. But I think antitrust is a a very difficult practice area in a lot of respects, but what I do like about it is the fact that that's a very specialized practice area and there's not as many people doing it.
What I have noticed is that it's also a practice area where it can be very difficult to bring in clients. And so a lot of times in law firms, the people that are Antitrust tend to be very senior and have national reputations and the people that they make partner who are bringing along in their [00:02:00] coattails and then hopefully they get business later.
Those are just few things about Antitrust and I think that's a great question. That's one of those practice areas where it's very cerebral. You need to be very smart. I want to make one other observation about Antitrust but I think that you should understand. I do feel like that there's a lot of people compared to other litigation practice areas that are able to be senior associates and of counsel and get jobs in the largest law firms there are and stay there for a long time, even without business. If the firms have the work. So I have noticed that law firms will often keep people around in Antitrust much longer than they would keep just regular litigators. And that's something I think to just keep in mind.
