DOJ Hires Antitrust Trial Lawyers For Future Court Actions

The Justice Department is ramping up its hiring of antitrust trial lawyers as the Biden administration moves to deliver on its promise to take alleged competition violators to court.

The antitrust division is filling “many vacancies” in San Francisco, Washington, New York and Chicago, according to a federal jobs site. It seeks “experienced first-chair and second-chair trial lawyers to take leadership roles on high-profile antitrust and competition cases,” the USAJOBS.gov post says.

The division has already tapped two plaintiffs’ attorneys with decades of experience in suing companies—Bonny Sweeney, an antitrust litigator of more than 20 years at Hausfeld in San Francisco and other firms, and trial lawyer Aaron Sheanin from Robins Kaplan. 

“Because of the types of people they’re hiring, they may be planning more” actions, said Phil Korologos, co-leader of Boies Schiller Flexner’s antitrust and competition practice. 

The antitrust division is poised to file a lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.‘s Google in coming weeks over the search engine’s dominance in the online advertising market, Bloomberg News reported July 14, citing two people familiar with the matter. 

Jonathan Kanter, the antitrust chief, has said he prefers lawsuits to block troublesome mergers rather than settlements that let deals proceed. His team is “turning the page on a failed experiment,” referring to past laissez-faire merger policy, he told Bloomberg News earlier this year. 

Sweeney and Sheanin declined to respond to requests for comment about their hires. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the hiring effort.

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