Washington, D.C.’s Leading Firms for Government Antitrust

Global Competition Review has conducted a survey on the top antitrust and competition law firms in Washington, D.C. Among the firms on the list, Kirkland was rated as "Highly Recommended."

Global Competition Review's comments:

The hard streets of Chicago may be Kirkland & Ellis’ true home, but Washington, DC is where it wields most of its antitrust clout. By Kirkland’s own count, 28 of the office’s partners handle antitrust matters, running the full gamut of merger clearance, litigation, government investigations and counselling, and many of those lawyers have valuable agency experience. Well-regarded partners Christine Wilson and Bilal Sayyed joined the firm with former [FTC] Chairman Tim Muris, while rising star Ian Conner is a former trial attorney for the DoJ’s antitrust division.
 
The firm says it handled over 12 percent of all Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) filings in the FTC’s 2014 fiscal year and, impressively, 10 percent of all deals that received second requests. These include advising Charter Communications in its $21.6 billion deal to acquire 3.9 million customers from Comcast in connection with the Time Warner Cable merger, and Community Health Systems in its hospital mega-merger with Health Management associates. With a heavy private equity client base eager to get deals done, though, the team prides itself on avoiding protracted reviews even for hair-raising, strategic deals. ‘We will pull all-nighters to avoid second requests,’ says Who’s Who Legal nominated partner Mark Kovner. Litigation is a strength of Kirkland’s practice in general and the DC office in particular. Greg Skidmore, Karen Walker and others represent Teva Pharmaceuticals in multiple reverse-payment pharmaceutical cases, including Lamictal, Nexium, Niaspan and the FTC’s recent complaint over Androgel.