An Advocate for Antitrust Defense and Mentorship (with Charles Moore)

Charles Moore, an accomplished antitrust attorney at White & Case LLP, developed a deep appreciation for community, mentorship, and the value of giving back—principles that have driven his successful career in antitrust law. Charles shares his journey, offering unique insights into the complexities of antitrust work and the evolving challenges in the field. He also highlights the importance of balance, exploring passions both within and beyond the legal profession, and the mutual rewards of mentorship. This episode is a thoughtful look at how a fulfilling career in law can be enriched by dedication, balance, and a commitment to community.

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Guest Info:

Charles Moore, Counsel, White & Case LLP

Charles specializes in antitrust litigation, counseling, and merger control. He has played a key role in securing antitrust clearance for major transactions across various industries, from medical devices to grocery chains. With a strong focus on the intersection of intellectual property and antitrust in pharmaceuticals, Charles also provides antitrust compliance training and e-Discovery support to clients.

Website: https://www.whitecase.com/people/charles-moore

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-moore-91631b21/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
And

(00:28):
we are back with another episode of The Advocate Next Door. I'm Kelby Balena.
Welcome back, welcome back everybody. My name is Margarita Arango.
And today we are here with a very special guest, Charles Moore. Charles is from White and Case.

(00:49):
And as we were talking right now, just offline, Charles is also a Washingtonian. I was born and
raised in Washington DC. And it sounds like we both grew up commander's fans at some point.
Absolutely. That's fantastic. So you were saying that you are from the DC area.
Yeah, born and raised in DC went to what I think is no longer West Elementary School on 14th Street.

(01:12):
Went to what is all I know for sure is no longer Wilson High School.
So actually in DC, not like suburbs. Born and raised in DC.
Went to Georgetown Hospital, the whole thing. Really?
Born and raised in DC. I was born in Georgetown Hospital as well.
Born and raised in DC. So yeah, I grew up. My mom was a school teacher in DC Public Schools. My dad
worked at Howard for a whole bunch of years. I haven't always lived here. So we lived in

(01:36):
Minneapolis for a few years. I've lived in New York for a bit, but lived in DC, the majority of the
DC area. Now I live in Maryland. So I don't know how we read that.
But your dad, he was at Howard? He taught at Howard. So he taught mathematics there.
And then he ran the computer lab for a number of years. He retired, I think, as a vice provost.

(01:56):
You'd have to check with my dad on the right title. But yeah, the funny thing about it is
my mom was a school teacher. So we would go to these local malls in the summertime. And
all these folks would stop my mom. I'm like, what's going on? I just want to buy some jeans
or whatever it is I'm getting for the summer. And it was so crazy. And as I've gotten older
and realized that as a school teacher, you have such an impact on people's lives, that so many

(02:19):
of these folks who would come up and they were like, man, thanks so much for this or thanks so
much for that. Or now I'm doing well. I'm an accountant or I'm a police officer or whatever
sort of thing, successful thing folks are doing with their own families. And as you get older,
you appreciate somebody actually pouring into your life and your situation in that way.
Definitely.
So I have a greater appreciation for that. Same with my dad. For those who are familiar with DC,

(02:43):
if you find your way to a certain grocery store in nearby Silver Spring, I'll just say that's off
of Colesville Road. You can wander in there and you will find all the Howard folks who have retired
and you walk in there and some of those folks probably, you know, I'm like, oh, these guys have
seen me since I was a little kid. And you know, my dad bring me to work, that kind of thing.
If I walked in, they'd be shocked. They may not even remember me anymore, but it's pretty crazy.

(03:05):
We go there every Saturday to get groceries and you bump in all these people he worked with. So
a lot of community in DC.
Yeah. So you went to Howard for law school.
I did.
And I think Howard doesn't get credibility that they deserve. There's an above the law
article that says if you remove the clerkships and you base it on just getting jobs, Howard is

(03:25):
on the top 15. When anyone I've met from Howard, like really just knows their stuff.
Did you like your time at Howard?
Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. And, you know, with my dad working at the university,
I had sort of a feeling, not so much with the law school because I wasn't his discipline.
Was he still there when you were?
So he was working there when I was an undergrad and as a law student,

(03:47):
but the law school is across the city from the main campus. We're off Connecticut Avenue,
but you have a good feel for who folks are, what they represent, the things that they sort of
instill in you. And the beautiful thing about it was that we all sort of learned you can do anything,
which is a very simple concept, but it's a crazy concept, right?
Yeah.
People are kind of pushing you forward and there were always folks there who were pushing people

(04:11):
forward. So I'll never forget it. I'd sort of owe them a great debt for the legal education,
but also the personal encouragement to move forward in my career, to go chase your dreams
and do the things that you're put here to do.
Did you always want to be a lawyer though? Your dad being in mathematics,
I myself am not great in mathematics, and your mom being a teacher.

(04:34):
She's a science teacher. Yeah.
Yeah. No lawyers, right? So I have, my parents are both science, math and science.
I have three siblings. I have two engineers and a psychiatrist, right? So zero lawyers.
Yeah. So you're a first generation lawyer.
First generation lawyer in that sense. And so nobody was really looking at that per se.
I just knew, look, I'm like you, I was not great at math.

(04:57):
Had no particular interest, though I love sort of an intellectual interest in science, but not
any real aptitude for it. So I had to figure out something to do. And the law worked out pretty
well, fortunately for me. Never thought about being a professor as your parents, or maybe you
can be a professor in the future. I've actually taught some law school classes. I taught an
antitrust class at Howard one semester. Shout out to my professor, Andy Gavel, who's a really,

(05:20):
really important figure in antitrust, who still teaches there. So one of my white and case
colleagues and I took over one of his classes when he was off in the government. And I've also taught
antitrust as well when we lived in Minneapolis at the University of St. Thomas's law school.
I've done a couple of semesters of that. And I've taught a new discovery class, co-taught that
at Georgetown with Pete Granval, who is here in DC as well. So I have done it.

(05:44):
Yeah, it's what I like of law. It's like a career that allows you to move through different things
and try whatever works best for you. It's the beauty of law, right? Your career is what you make
of it in some ways. And so if what you want to do is practice law at a law firm with the government
or with a nonprofit, or in house at a company, you can do all of those things. But if you don't want

(06:05):
to be a lawyer, you still have this great base of knowledge that helps you do something else,
run a business, for example, or run a nonprofit. You have this really good sense of what's important,
what's not important, what's going to get me in trouble, how to succeed, all that sort of stuff.
So the legal education is super versatile, and is very helpful for a variety of things that people

(06:29):
may want to do. And our guest is working at one of the top 10 law firms in the world doing antitrust,
which is no easy feat. What about antitrust? I mean, was that a field that you were targeting
when you were going to law school? Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. I quite honestly had zero

(06:49):
idea of what kind of lawyer I wanted to be when I got to law school. But one of the things I love
about antitrust, I always sort of call it multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary in this sense.
You have US federal antitrust law. The states all have antitrust laws in terms of what they're
doing in this enforcement there. There are civil elements or criminal elements. If you like to do

(07:13):
transactions, you never really want to go to court or rarely want to go to court. Sometimes
mergers do get challenged. You can work on the merger side of it and work with your transactional
colleagues. If you want to do litigation, you can do big class actions or just even sort of one-on-one
business to business sort of litigation. But there's something in it for everybody.
And I love it. Or do counseling, right? Where you're not necessarily going to court but helping

(07:35):
people comply with the law. Typically people do antitrust counseling along with other kinds of
legal things that folks are doing with their compliance within a company, depending upon
what sort of industry the company is in. And so there's something in it for everybody. Keeps
you on your toes. And I love that part of it. So it's really, really interesting.
How did you get to antitrust?

(07:55):
I didn't start at White & Case. I was working in another phenomenal law firm here in DC. I ended
up working on a couple of mergers. I thought this is kind of interesting doing document review,
right? Everybody kind of hates document review. People who cringe when I say, man, I was doing
document review and I didn't hate it. I didn't hate it. I actually liked reading the documents.
And then the other part of it was even early on, you have to go collect the documents. And I'm old,

(08:20):
right? So back when you used to go and show up and get documents from folks, like physical paper
documents they print out, not the documents that people now can just review online. You'd actually
get actually print out documents at the very beginning of my career molding them to where they
print them out, have them in boxes. You have to read physical paper documents. People would do
that. But it was cool because you'd have to go to the client, right? So you'd show up and you

(08:42):
actually get to meet people. This is an actual client, actual corporate folks who are doing this.
And so I learned a lot about client service and client relations because I would be physically in
somebody's office collecting documents or reviewing documents, having to go back and talk to people
about it. So I thought it was super interesting and it really helped me learn how everything worked.

(09:03):
So I actually didn't hate document review. Now saying that now, you know, 20 plus years later,
but I want to go sit in a room with a document. It's changed a lot. It has, right? You know, it's a whole different deal.
But for those who are listening to this, who find themselves doing some sort of due diligence and like,
man, forget this guy. This is terrible. Why would I ever want to do it? Trust me on this. You actually
learn a lot from this. You learn a lot about how the company operates. Learn a lot about other people

(09:25):
operate. There's a whole lot to get out of it. If you're willing to look at the silver lining of doing
that sort of work. Well, back before you joined WhitenCase, I was at WhitenCase as well. So I'm
sure we crossed paths at some point. There were two floors that were just dedicated to documents.
Everything was being printed. There were copiers up there. There were just teams that were just
living within the documents, going through things. Bates labeling manually. You just little late and

(09:47):
you put little labels, stickers on every single page. And it was chaotic, but it was a time that
I loved. I started my first, I'd say it's six months in antitrust, worked with a great team.
Unfortunately, I moved to the practice group that I was hired for and at left-hand I trust. But one
of the things I got was it is a lot of work, sometimes a lot of work on demand because you

(10:10):
might get a second request. You might get something from the government and you are, it's all hands on
deck. And sometimes I was the one who would have to call everyone at midnight and say, hey, we just
got this thing. We need people in the office as early as you can. Some people would come back
at night and go over there. And it was fascinating. And now you can do most of that electronic,

(10:35):
but is it as busy now as it used to be back then, or is it different because there's way more
documents that we save electronically? Well, it is as busy, I think in part because of that,
right? When I first started doing this, people had XML on their computers, but then you'd have
printed binders and all these other things. And now that's exploded in terms of the amount of data

(11:00):
that people keep electronically. And there's so many more ways to keep it. People keep stuff in
their phones, tablets, people keep stuff in all kinds of other places, in the cloud, wherever else
things may exist that didn't really exist 25 years ago, right? At least they weren't being used in
that way, even if they did exist. So there's so many more sources of data, but there's also

(11:21):
a question in terms of interest philosophy. Are you more aggressive or less aggressive? Obviously,
administrations affect some of those things in terms of priorities. So it stays busy because
people have more stuff, electronic sort of information that they keep, but also because
as transactions become more complex, as the world becomes different, and again, as you have

(11:45):
different folks who are focused on different things, and as more jurisdictions kind of adopt
antitrust regimes, whether they focus on mergers, whether they're focused on what we think of as
kind of cartel, sort of price fixing that kind of behavior, or both, or other things that,
and has become more global as a society, you have so many more opportunities for antitrust to come

(12:08):
into play. And a lot of people think of antitrust as doing things that maybe they didn't think of
antitrust as being able to do in terms of dealing with, whether it's pricing or whether it's data,
whether it's other sorts of things. So it's stay pretty busy. So for our global audience,
in other parts of the world, it's called anti-competitive law, or anti-monopoly law.

(12:30):
But here in the States, or more commonly known as antitrust, either with the dash or without the dash.
We haven't figured that out. I'm a no-dash guy. But there are a variety of ways that people go
about that. For our general audience who may not understand what antitrust is, because it sounds
like you're working with these monopolies. But I guess for the layman person who doesn't really

(12:52):
understand, why is it something that the government either comes after you for, or is regulating,
or that, what is it to the common person on the street who has no idea, or maybe as a law student
who might be interested in this field? Sure. So I'm going to do it this way. So first, just as a,
I don't know if disclaimer is the right word, whatever it is, I primarily defend folks,

(13:16):
right? So the vast, vast, vast majority of my experience as an antitrust lawyer is representing
corporations and individuals on the defense side of things. Whether that is defending a merger
against a challenge from the agencies, whether that is defending somebody who's accused,
some sort of criminal or civil price fixing, or other sorts of antitrust or anti-competition

(13:38):
related activity. So that's my perspective. I say that so people know where I'm coming from.
Your side of the pond. Exactly. They can figure out how much salt they want to take this with
in terms of what I'm saying. But in a big picture level, so antitrust law is the law of competition,
and to your point, outside of the US people often refer to as competition law or anti-monopoly law,
those kinds of things. And there are a number of ways in which it comes up. In the context of large

(14:05):
transactions, right? Mergers or acquisitions or other kinds of transactions, maybe joint ventures,
other things like that where this can arise. The agencies, whether it's in the US, you're talking
about the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division,
outside the United States where there are a variety of really active, focused antitrust agencies

(14:25):
around the world, or competition agencies around the world. What they're looking for, generally
speaking, is in the transaction world, the merger world, what the antitrust lawyers call the merger
side of it, is to determine whether a particular transaction, a particular merger, a particular
acquisition, particular joint venture, some other kind of collaborative activity like that, that
qualifies for review under whatever the jurisdictions law is, what they're looking for is to determine

(14:51):
whether that combination is going to lower the amount of competition in that particular place,
sufficiently that it causes problems for people. In other words, problems in the form of higher
prices, problems in the form of lower quality, problems in the form of less willingness of the

(15:14):
remaining companies or firms or whatever to compete on things that would help give consumers
a better deal, right? So maybe it's on whether you're willing to fix things or maybe it's on
whether you're willing to offer certain other kinds of perks that consumers may find valuable.
But competition can be like, if a company is in the same market as another or they have similar

(15:41):
products, prices, how does competition work? Right, so that's exactly right, Marguerita.
So it depends upon what you're looking at. So often in the context of competition law or antitrust
law, you'll try to figure out, A, what's the appropriate, and use the word market, right,
geographic market. In other words, what physical location or locations do we care about? Is it the

(16:01):
United States? Is it a particular state in the United States? Is it a city? Is it some bigger
area than that, depending upon what the product or service is that we're talking about? And then
you're looking at that and then once you figure out what the appropriate geographic area, region,
or market, which I have in air quotes that folks can't see, but I'm getting that, that we're
talking about, right? Thank you for highlighting that.
There we go, yeah, it's important, right? So there we are. Then what we're going to look at is what

(16:26):
they call the product market and product, product or service, right? So what specific thing is it
that this company or these companies, what are they selling? What are they offering? What are
they promoting? What are they manufacturing? Whatever the case may be. So what's the thing
or the service, right? What service are they providing? And then you're looking to say, okay,
now that we've identified what this thing is, who else does it? What other companies or what other

(16:50):
other folks provide this particular service, what other folks manufacture or market or sell
this particular product, right? And those competitors, and that's kind of what you're
looking at. At the same time, I think you probably have people who would say, wait a minute,
in terms of what I would consider called organic growth. In other words, I'm not merging with
somebody. I'm not acquiring somebody. I'm simply taking my own money and opening another location

(17:17):
of my business. Assuming that I'm able to get the permits and all the other sort of local things
that you need to take care of, I'd make an argument that that's not an antitrust problem at all.
You know, I have every right to expand my business in some ways, even if that makes me larger. Now,
does that mean that all agencies would agree with that? And it's not an antitrust problem?

(17:37):
There may be some arguments on the other side of that, but I think as a defense person, I would say
it's America. I should absolutely be able to open up whatever I want to.
Is it possible to see competing like a big company with a small new one,
or that's not something that you will see? That's a great question. I'm going to agree.
One of the things the government, you know, our government, US government has talked about
in more recent years is this question of, are you buying a company to prevent some new brand new

(18:04):
company from being able to compete with you down the line? I think that's what you're getting to.
What, so the antitrust folks call nascent competition. That's the concept of it. Are
you killing nascent competition? Are you damaging nascent competition in some sort of way?
That maybe this company, the target company isn't in a position like right this very minute,
like today, to be an effective competitor. But down the road, these guys are on the way, right,

(18:28):
to that. You can kind of see there on the way they're developing a new product, new service,
whatever it is. And so is company is the buyer buying this target company to prevent that ascent
from happening? Right? So there's some questions around that. So you do see some of that in terms
of not the companies are doing that, but you do see questions around whether that's what the

(18:50):
intention of a particular acquisition is. And so if you're defending against that, again, you're
going to say, no, here's why this makes sense. You know, we could develop it, it's going to cost
X zillion dollars to do this. Are there all these other reasons why this doesn't make sense? And
quite frankly, you know, here are the other reasons why the nascent competitor as it were,
you know, might not succeed. If it were on its own, the public may never get the benefit

(19:11):
of these particular products or services unless somebody like us buys them who cares about what
happens in this particular industry. And so we're going to bring this to market in terms of where
you are on those arguments. And so a lot of that might be the way that you go about it if you were
defending something like that. But again, if you're on the other side of your plane of on the side
of that, or you're the government that's out, you'd say, wait a minute, you're doing this because
you see these guys as in a year or two or six months or whatever it is, they're going to be

(19:36):
just as good as you are at this thing, or they're going to take customers away from you. You can't
have that. So now you're going to try to go after them. I generally don't know enough about what
goes on in the background, but you deal with major companies, especially to acquire someone
like white and case and yourself, it can get complicated. If you're doing something like
antitrust, does it ever go into other fields? Like I think at some point, you said something about

(19:59):
white collar, or you might have to be working on the government or other things, I mean, like taxes
or something like that. So if someone's a law student, and they want to do antitrust, could they
expect also to do other things? Great question. One of the great things by antitrust is that it
can intersect with all kinds of other areas of law, for example, with its IP, in the context of

(20:21):
pharma, for example, IP issues often come up in that context. And so there's an intersection of
IP and antitrust can happen in the pharma industry, but certainly white collar antitrust has in the
US and in certain other places as well. It has a criminal component in the sense of potential
prison time for folks. Oh, really? Right. So not just fines, not just paying money, but people can

(20:45):
go to jail. And people do go to jail for antitrust violations. Absolutely. Anytime jail is on the
table, it's serious. So that's something that you want to sit up a little straight in your chair and
pay attention to when you're talking to individuals about the potential for conduct that might result
in actual prison time. So that's white collar in the sense of what you're doing, obviously,

(21:05):
kind of white collar crime. In the US, those crimes are what people tend to think of as per se
violations. And the difference with that, and not to get too deep in antitrust is that people think
of this concept of per se as these are the types of antitrust violations that people look at and

(21:26):
the government society is determined that there really isn't any potential benefit to society for
people doing it. So things like price fixing, right? The idea that the three of us get together
and say, we sell whatever product and we're all going to sell the product at this price.
And so even if somebody comes and negotiate with you to buy it, and you're willing to offer them a
better price to get the sale, you won't do it because of our agreement. And so that keeps the

(21:50):
price what people say artificially high because were it not for our agreement, you might be willing
to give somebody a lower price to steal the customer from me. That sort of thing. Market
allocation. So we decided to divide up the market in some particular way. So you sell these products,
I sell those products, whatever the case may be. Or customer allocation, you only serve these

(22:10):
customers, I only serve those customers. That's bid rigging, things like that. That sort of conduct
is conduct that we consider quote unquote per se and we have for decades and decades and decades.
And often the Department of Justice will look into that conduct and treat those items as criminal.
The company ends up paying a fine and the executives who are involved may end up going to jail,

(22:32):
right? In terms of terms of where that is. So that's what you're doing. And if you're defending that,
you're fighting it less sometimes on the impact. You may fight the impact in a civil case where
a private plaintiff brings a lawsuit and says you were involved in all this conduct and it caused
this, these massive gigantic losses. And you're like, whoa, no, there are all these other reasons
why it caused a much smaller set of losses than what you're claiming. But in terms of the criminal

(22:55):
part of that, the fight is less over what the actual result of this particular agreement is,
but whether there was an agreement because the existence of an agreement is enough to get to
you one of those jumpsuits that you don't really want. So that's kind of the deal on that. And then
if you're not in that world of the kind of conduct that it's considered to be per se, you're in the

(23:16):
conduct of this world called the rule of reason. And so that's a little different deal because
ultimately you're looking at the conduct, why it's bad from a competitive standpoint and what good
reasons from a competitive standpoint you might have for doing this particular thing. Often in
the context of mergers, for example, or things like that. So civil conduct, like the government's not
necessarily going after people to try to prosecute them for wanting to engage in a particular merger

(23:41):
or other kinds of civil conduct that may exist. So that's what you're looking at there. And this
kind of rule of reason side of it, typically those are civil sorts of cases, whether the government's
bringing them, but obviously there could be civil lawsuits where somebody's, why are you doing this?
Why did you enter into these agreements? What are you doing here? You hear sometimes about exclusive
arrangements where businesses may have an agreement to sell or purchase products from other people,

(24:06):
or if you offer a particular product or service, that kind of thing. So you end up a lot of times
in that, in sort of that rule of reason world, that non-criminal world, which is an entirely
different kind of analysis. And obviously the risk profile is a little bit different for folks
if GL is not on the table. Well, I can tell you're really passionate about what you do.
It's really fascinating. Does the job that you do allow you to enjoy life outside of the firm? I mean,

(24:33):
I'm just going from my experience of being called in the middle of the night because there was this
big emergency with documents and stuff, but you get much time to go on vacation, travel, whatever
hobbies I guess you enjoy. Yeah, I'm going to be careful how to say that, right? Because I'm sure
the firm, if people listen to this, I work hard all the time. I'm always dedicated. You got to have
a little bit of balance. That's exactly right. I'm dedicated to whatever our clients need,

(24:56):
and we'll take care of them in all ways, right? So with that being said, absolutely. I mean,
the great thing about all of this is that it's extremely important to identify things that you
like doing and to pursue those passions, right? Some of them are going to be work-related, but
there may be other things, right? That people, some people love to play golf, some people like

(25:17):
other things, some people enjoy roller coasters, whatever it is that you want to do,
find those other things that help take your mind off of your day-to-day. Go golfing with your
clients. Go golfing with your clients or just find ways to relax. It's important to be a well-rounded
person, and I firmly believe that because you'll perform better at work if you're well-rounded,
you're balanced, you're healthy on all levels. You got to get your exercise in. I try to

(25:42):
get my walks and runs in daily, maybe early in the morning or depending on what I'm doing, if I'm
tied up early in the morning because I have things I've got to do work-wise, maybe I'll try to get
them in a little bit later in the day, but you got to have that time where you get in, you focus
yourself, and you're able to take some time away because if you don't do that, you'll burn out.

(26:03):
We're all human beings and that's what happens. And so I definitely encourage people to find,
in all seriousness, right, encourage people to find things that they enjoy doing outside of work.
I've got family, you have other things that you're doing as well, and we make sure that we take some
time to do that. That's really interesting. But also, Charles, you were talking with me

(26:23):
before the show about your engagement, your speaking engagements. I think that's pretty
cool to have into account in this podcast because is it important for a lawyer or for a law student
or for anyone that wants to pursue a career in the legal field to engage in speaking events?
Absolutely. There are a couple of different things I want to say about that. First is,

(26:48):
I believe it's extremely important to give back. It's extremely important to share what you know,
what you've learned with other folks who are coming up after you. So a lot of the things I
end up doing relate to sharing whatever I've learned over the last X number of years as a lawyer
with younger lawyers, right, just so you understand, don't make the mistakes I've made.
Or if there's something that I did that worked out really well, I want to share that with you

(27:12):
so that you can follow a similar path or see that path is available to you. So hopefully it works out
even better for you than it worked out for me. So there's part of being a good citizen, a good
steward within this community. You want to share what you have and what you know, whether that's
talking to law students. I'm part of the ABA antitrust section, part of leadership of that.

(27:32):
I do a lot of things within the ABA antitrust section and other areas as well. I've gotten
more involved in National Bar Association, which is the African American Bar Association. So
it's just kind of being involved in whether it's bar associations, whether it's nonprofits,
whether it is some other kind of outlet that allows you to share what you have and what you know with

(27:55):
other folks. That's always a good thing, at least as far as I'm concerned. How do you begin that
path of speaking? Because for a lawyer that maybe is a young lawyer or someone that is
young in the legal field, how do they begin to pursue the speaking engagements? I think some
of that is just getting involved in organizations. And I can tell you that I don't know that I've

(28:18):
always felt qualified to offer any particular advice. People ask me, even with your experience.
Oh, absolutely. Look, you asked me to do this now. I was like, man, I'm really honored to be a guest.
I'm honored to have you. I mean, I know your background in antitrust and being one of the top
firms in the world. And as counsel, you've probably seen a lot in your career. So it's great to have

(28:41):
your expertise. No, I appreciate that. And this never, what's the phrase? It never gets old,
right? Ultimately, I am always grateful when folks ask me to come speak someplace or to do
something, whether it's ABA, whether it's here on your podcast, whatever it is, because you can't
take any of that for granted, right? That ultimately, that there are folks who are interested in what you

(29:02):
have to say. And you have to prepare in some ways to make sure that you actually are offering
people some real value. People can walk away with something practical that they can implement
to move forward. So, you know, to your point, Margarita, about speaking, one of the ways that
that's happened for me, again, whether I was qualified to do it or should have been doing it,
or they should have asked somebody who's much better and much more qualified than I am to do it,

(29:23):
is getting involved. So get involved in the ABA antitrust section, get involved in the MBA,
get involved in other bar associations, whether they are big, you know, bar societies like the
ABA or affinity bar associations, whatever those may be, get involved in those things,
get involved in nonprofits, get involved. Once you're there, and you pick up expertise
in different things, then people will see that expertise. And people will recognize, hey,

(29:48):
this person may have something of value to share with our audience. And that's how it happens.
And so I try to say yes to stuff when I can say yes to stuff, right? On my own time or
whatever the case may be. Because again, I think it's important that we're in a constant sort of
ecosystem of sharing what you have. So I learn from other people, you know, I listen to podcasts,

(30:11):
I listen to seminars on antitrust and other topics. And I get things from those seminars,
and I try to share what I have whenever somebody asks me to speak on different things.
And the law is always changing with technology changing Bitcoin, AI and stuff now mergers,
acquisitions, antitrust, is it changing as well? I mean, we're no longer doing paper and room full

(30:35):
of boxes. What is it like now? Absolutely. There's always an evolution, right? Either because
to your point, technology has changed the way we interact with different issues. Or because again,
there are other folks who are making decisions, who believe that who have certain other priorities,
who believe that other things about this are important. So you may see from administration

(30:56):
to administration, you may see certain changes. For example, on the per se, you know, violations
I was talking about criminal, what I'll call criminal antitrust. In that context, typically,
that's kind of stable. In the sense that I don't foresee anytime soon somebody saying, oh, you know,
price fixing, we're going to say this is okay, that has been pretty stable across
administrations. But there may be other things like what people's view is whether mergers are

(31:20):
good or bad, other kinds of conduct. We've seen, for example, the Federal Trade Commission with
the rule on non capites, right, that's been in the news, or other things that it's doing.
That's maybe a little bit different than what we've heard states have been regulating non capites
for many, many, many, many years. But for that to be a focus on the federal level, I think is somewhat
not too much new in the sense of maybe somebody can probably call and say he's totally wrong.

(31:44):
I had a case 10 years ago that's happened. But at the global level of saying, we're going to
eliminate them in a large scale basis. That's relatively new, right, in terms of where people
are. And there are folks on both sides of those issues who have very strong opinions. And we'll
see where all that comes out in terms of any challenges that happen with it. So there are

(32:04):
always issues that come up because you have very bright minds on opposite poles, right, where we
are and what this ought to look like. It's interesting as practitioners when we come into those
issues to see what issues our clients may have, what issues the government may bring
that may affect our clients, how those things are going, and then how you have to go about
resolving those issues in ways that help our clients operate their businesses in the right way.

(32:29):
Does the day job affect your life when you are watching a movie, reading a book or something
that way they're like, no, you guys have got this totally wrong. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it does. It does.
It's funny. I'll watch some legal drama, that kind of thing. And people sit there, man, is this
really how this happens? No, that would never happen, right? In the vast majority of cases,

(32:50):
right? Are you going to have the defendant get on the stand and confess to this or that, whatever?
No, no, it probably doesn't. I mean, it certainly happens, right? Every now and then. We're finding
smoking guns. Right, finding the smoking gun all the time. We can absolutely find this to wrap this
case up, where that goes on. And so there's all that kind of stuff that happens, but it's kind of
fun. You know, I enjoy it. And there are other times I watch and like, you know what, I would

(33:12):
have asked that question. That's exactly the right question to ask to get the answer that you're
trying to get to figure out what happened in this particular thing. So it happens in that context.
The great thing about, I've always been said, it's the great thing about sort of law school,
which teaches you more how to think than it does how to practice law because they're all, you know,
whether it's writing letters or other things like that, there are all these like elements of

(33:34):
practicing law that law school will be doing for law schools to teach you all those different
skill sets that you need to have. But the thought process is something that it can teach you to do
really well. And that part of it is super interesting because I take most things and
find the questions I want to ask about how this works or how that works that may be different than

(33:58):
a non-lawyer. And I mean, it could be anybody like super, you know, rocket scientists, doctors,
folks who are unquestionably more brilliant than I am. But you kind of look at these things and say,
I can break down this particular issue. I could think of all the avenues, all the ways this can
be right or wrong. And I can do it in a dispassionate way. So it isn't personal, right? I'm not looking

(34:22):
to attack somebody personally, because I disagree with that person about whatever it is. It's that
I don't agree that this is the right way to look at this. There may be different ways to look at
it. Maybe they're better, maybe they're worse, maybe they're just different. But having that
ability to think through things in a multi layered way is one of the gifts that law schools continue

(34:43):
to give me. You gave us a lot of great advice, especially with networking. For anyone who is a
senior attorney, and they encounter a law student, is there any advice you would give the mentor,
senior partners, senior associates, what can they do to help the new generation?
A lot of it's just being open, right? You can have younger lawyers who are intimidated. I've worked

(35:07):
at this place. It's a big office, you've achieved some level of success. And then that success can
be intimidating to folks to figure out where do I start? It isn't even just necessarily, how do I
get to where you are? But how do I take the first set of steps, right? To be better than I am right
now. It's putting yourself back in those shoes to say, I remember when I was here, and I wish I'd

(35:30):
known this, and sharing, hey, if I'd known this, I might be better off. If I'd known that, yeah,
it worked out, but I wouldn't have worried so much. So there are those kinds of things that
everybody who's been doing this, the two of you, others, everybody's been doing whatever you're
doing for any length of time, will have experiences, will pick up knowledge that could be valuable to

(35:55):
somebody else who's coming after you. And the sharing that part of it, it's being willing to
share it, taking a moment. It might be just in an email, not just kind of saying no, or just saying
yes, or just saying thanks, but taking the time to go back. One of the things I heard, and I'm going
to give some credit here to Michael Baxter, who's a partner at Covington, who's a phenomenal

(36:17):
restructuring bankruptcy lawyer. And he and I have done this thing called the DC Roadshow, which
exists to encourage African American law students to come to DC to do that. Michael was a keynote
speaker at the DC Roadshow last year. One of the things he talked about was how, as I said,
how as a partner, when partners go through and they mark up your brief or whatever it is, your draft,

(36:40):
that in some ways is mentoring. If you look at it the right way, the senior person is taking the time
to correct whatever gap, fix whatever gaps, correct whatever mistakes, all those things
that are in your draft, right? That may need to be corrected. And if you're willing to accept it
in that sort of way, that that's something you can learn from as a younger lawyer to do that.

(37:00):
And so to the extent that you have time as a senior lawyer to go through and say, hey,
this wasn't right, that wasn't right, you need to say this this way, the client will appreciate
it if you express it that way. This really gets to what the client's asking. This really helps the
client solve this particular issue that the client came to us and is paying us to help resolve,
you know, much better than the way that you phrased it, right? We need to be more emphatic.

(37:24):
If this is really important, you need to emphasize this in this particular way more. If that's not
as important, you need to understand this isn't as important. All those kinds of comments, all the
red ink that shows up in the draft that you're getting back, that that can be a form of mentoring,
if done properly. And I had folks- Well, you're taking the time to do it.
Absolutely. And listen, I can tell you, I've been on the receiving end of a whole lot of mentoring

(37:46):
and it's a red ink in that regard, and deservedly so on my end, just kind of getting making sure I
got things right. But that can be that. And so as a more senior person, sometimes it's not always
just sitting down for hours and hours talking through life with people, but it's taking the
time to explain what's going on. It's taking the time to say, hey, I'm gonna do this call.
This is what we want to talk about. This is what the issues are. Bang, bang, bang, right? In terms

(38:09):
of you have this in. And so you have this question that you may have and so that you know where this
is going. It's setting it up at the beginning of a case just to say, this is what we're doing.
Here's why we're here, those kinds of things. So that you're learning as a young lawyer why we're
here, what we're doing, what our role is, how we can be helpful, how we can help solve the problem.

(38:33):
We're lawyers, we're attorneys, we're problem solvers, right? People are coming to us
and they are willing to engage us and pay us to help solve some specific problem. And so that's
our job. And if we haven't solved the problem, then we haven't done our jobs. That doesn't mean
the answer is always going to be no or yes, but it does mean that it's your job to dive in there
and figure out what's going on and figure out what's in the short term and long term interest

(38:57):
of your client. That's your ethical responsibility and representing your client to the best of your
ability. That's your responsibility to do. And it's a good way to figure out where you need to go.
It's also a good way to learn whether it's antitrust or tax or whatever else to learn those areas as
well that you're digging into these issues and help solve these problems. Why is this problem
arising? What's the cause of this problem? What are the potential solutions to this problem or

(39:21):
this issue? Maybe it's not a problem per se, maybe an issue. What are the potential solutions to this?
Was this something that gets us 80% of where we want to go? Something gets us 100% of where
we want to go? Something only gets us 40% of where we want to go? What's the law on this and how does
that intersect with whatever the specific issues are? What actually happened? What are the facts
here? How do those facts intersect with whatever we need to figure out, right? What's going on?

(39:43):
So, but digging into that and as a more senior lawyer, bringing folks along so they can see
those pieces, see how people make these kinds of decisions, that can be super helpful. Wherever
that's possible, isn't always possible to do, but where it's possible to do, that's very helpful.
So you can kind of do that, right? That's part of mentoring.
And let me tell you, every little bit helps. I remember a senior partner right before we were

(40:07):
about to start a six month antitrust case, sat everybody down and the first thing he says is,
he wants to make sure that no one is driving home after a long night back from trial.
It wants to make sure everybody has their, well, back in the day was a cab, but I guess today would
be Uber because he even told a story where someone got in an accident. It wasn't great.

(40:31):
He expressed concern that everybody get home safe. It's not worth it to drive sleepy or to
sleep in the office. Just get home, be safe, because you're no good to us if you're not around.
And I took it like, hey, someone cares. And even though maybe he has no idea that that meant
something, it did. And that little bit of mentorship goes a long way.

(40:56):
There are a lot of mentors that don't even realize they're mentoring.
Every single piece of advice is good for something. You learn from it. As a young lawyer,
I think that's very important to try to absorb as much as you can and to try to nourish from
everything that you can. That's really important. Absolutely. Somebody's got to understand, hey,

(41:16):
people care about what happens to you because again, to the question asked about what do you
do outside of work, we're actual humans, right? We're antitrust robots or tax robots or employment
law robots. We're actually human beings with families and interests outside of work. You got
to be healthy and you got to be well. It's important when people say things. Even like that,

(41:37):
what we're doing is extremely important. No one should question that it's extremely important,
but you got to be safe. You got to be healthy. Don't injure yourself seriously or worse here.
Make sure that you're taking the safest course. That's excellent advice and it's really important.
The other part that reflected a lot of my career was the idea of creating a system. When he explained

(42:01):
the story of a partner, something happening to him and the judge wanting to just go forward with
the case, somebody else would have to take over. It was one of those situations where he'd use that
example. It made me realize, wow, not only are we mentoring, but we're also creating these systems.
Everyone on the team should know what everyone is doing because you're working as a team. You're
working like, here's the status of where the case is. Here's my call with an expert so that everybody

(42:27):
knew because if something happened to me or I needed to take a break, somebody could pick up.
I don't know if he ever intended to explain it that way, but that's how I saw it. I realized
when I work with someone, I need to be on the same page with them so that we can work together.
If they ever needed a break or I needed a break, we can pick up and work well together.

(42:50):
No, I love the idea of being a team. You're here at an awesome law firm as well. One of the great
things at working at large law firms, like the law firms where we work, is that you are part of a
team. That framework is extremely important because you're right, we have roles, things that we're

(43:12):
supposed to do, whatever our job is within that team construct. It's super important to know that
we aren't in this by ourselves. We aren't on islands by ourselves in terms of doing that.
When you are leading the team, that's a very helpful thing to impart upon the team. People
understand we're all in this thing together. We're in this thing, again, to solve whatever the issue

(43:36):
is the client needs us to resolve. That's why we're here, but we're all in this thing together.
If you need a hand, somebody's going to be there to pick you up. Somebody else needs a hand,
you've got to be there to pick them up. That's how this whole thing works. That's part of how we're
going to be successful, that we're all going to step in, do what we're supposed to do within the

(43:59):
team, whatever our particular responsibility is, but we're also there for one another in a good way.
I love that we're sending this message to our audience. I think it's very important that
everyone realizes how good it could be for either young lawyers to learn from seniors or
seniors to learn as well from young lawyers. Absolutely. Sometimes lawyers that are more

(44:23):
senior tend to get involved in their things and they're so close to that, that maybe sometimes
they need just to back off a little bit or take some stuff backwards to see that the simple things
that the young lawyer may have a little bit more fresh or the curiosity of a young lawyer might help

(44:44):
to build something better for a senior lawyer. 100% Marga, you're totally right.
I love that you talked about senior lawyers learning from young lawyers. There's the legal
part of this where young lawyers often in the research or we were talking at the beginning
about people looking through documents. There's maybe legal stuff on a case, the new cases,

(45:07):
the documents, those things, where there are facts and documents that the more senior lawyers need
to have to be able to make the appropriate arguments or do whatever it is they need to do
with respect to that particular matter. There may be cases that are important or there are other
due diligence that the younger lawyers have. They've gone through to make sure the senior
lawyers are prepared to handle the matter appropriately. There's all that sort of stuff.

(45:28):
That's extremely important and it's relevant to the success of that particular matter.
But there's also the fact that younger lawyers are also younger people. Sometimes you learn
about the way that people operate today that wouldn't necessarily be the way that you would
go about doing it from your generation. Well, in my day, we would do blah, blah, blah. We'd march

(45:50):
12 miles in the snow. Nobody's doing that. They're getting a ride. This is what's going on.
It's important to understand that. If you get stuck in the way that you did things, you'll miss
a bunch of opportunities. You'll miss a bunch of solutions. You'll miss really good things
that you need not only to survive but to thrive in today's world. You're operating today.

(46:11):
And so there's so much that our younger folks, not just our younger lawyers, but younger people
generally can teach older folks about getting around today's world, navigating the different
things that go on that we didn't have just in terms of technologies, all kinds of technology
I didn't grow up having in the 80s in terms of what people were doing that exists today,
in terms of the way that people communicate things, things people do, the way people think

(46:34):
about things, all of that, that if I were to close myself off to that, that I would lose.
Right. I couldn't be as good at what I do and not just as a lawyer, but as a human being.
So it's extremely important that that information flow in both directions in terms of that.

(46:56):
Because experience is also very valuable. I mean, I think the team concept is very,
very important. I think both ways can gain a lot from that.
Definitely. Definitely. And that's what makes the most effective mentor-mentee relationships.
People, sometimes students or others, folks will ask me, how do you find a good mentor?
And one of the answers that I will give is you got to be a good mentee.

(47:18):
Right. That's a great question, great answer.
And what does that mean? Right. It means you don't want to be annoying, but you want to check in
sometimes. You want to make sure that things are going well. If your mentor does something,
has some success in a case, because we're lawyers, we'll just talk about that way,
versus other professionals who are doing whatever their industries may be.

(47:39):
Hey, I saw this on whatever, and I'm going to congratulate you for that. Or I read it wherever.
There's a two-way flow. So it isn't just a one-way thing where you're reaching out to somebody,
asking that person to give you something. But I'm also giving of myself. I'm also making myself
available to that older or more seasoned lawyer as well. Right. So it's a two-way street in terms

(48:03):
of how that relationship works out. It isn't just that I'm asking this person to invest in me,
but I'm also investing in that person as well. And when you create that symbiotic situation,
that benefits everybody. Right. And you can kind of go forward from there.
And so you're willing to be a mentor to someone. You're willing to invest in folks who are willing

(48:23):
to invest in you. But if somebody is reaching out to you, and the only reason they ever call you,
talk to you is because they want something from you. Many of us, we all had that experience,
right? With somebody's like, this person only calls me when he or she wants something. That's
the only reason I hear from them is when they want something from me. They want money from me. Would
you contribute to this? Would you do that? And I try to be somebody who reaches out to folks just

(48:46):
to say hello or whatever the case may be. So that when you see my name, you're actually happy to see
it, right? In terms of what goes on, because it doesn't have to be the case. You could see my name,
I don't want to talk to that guy. And the way that you avoid that is that you're also investing in
that person. And then maybe as the mentee, you obviously don't have the experience, you may not

(49:09):
even have the money or those kinds of things contribute to where this person is, more senior,
more successful person is. But again, but you can congratulate them, take an interest in their
careers and sort of be supportive wherever you can be. There's always something that you can do
to give something. Each of us has the ability to give something. And you want to make sure that
you're giving things we can give. Does the firm do any kind of pro bono? At some point, you had

(49:30):
spoken about a special task force that the firm coordinates. Yep, absolutely. When George Floyd
got murdered, the firm started, started with the antitrust group, but we have all kinds of non
antitrust lawyers in the firm who do this, as well as some clients with whom we partner, this thing
called the racial justice task force. So we all remember sort of summer of 2020. And we watched

(49:52):
this horrific event with George Floyd's murder on television. We were home because of COVID.
Yeah, it was horrible. And all those things. And it was awful, awful, awful. And for many of us in
the African American community, we've been talking about this particular issue for a long time.
George Floyd was among the latest victims of this, but certainly wasn't the first.

(50:13):
So we started this racial justice task force working on education issues, criminal justice reform,
and it's been fascinating and phenomenal to try to do our part in making the world a little bit
better place where we can, right, taking on matters that we can help bridge gaps in terms of racial
justice, whether those are litigation related matters, whether those are mentorship, we talked

(50:36):
about mentorship here, whether those are economic empowerment sorts of things, so the businesses get
sort of support that they need. But it's been a wonderful experience to be part of something
like that. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to mention it because I think part of what happens
for the students who are out there, others who are like, man, I work at this big law firm,
and I'm going to be working all these hours, and I'm only doing certain kinds of things. I don't

(50:59):
have an opportunity to work on pro bono or other sorts of things. A lot of my passion, right,
a lot of what's got into is to give back to give back in some way. And this is a concrete way
that we as a law firm and my colleagues and I can give back on this particular front. But there are

(51:19):
certainly other fronts where people can give back as well. So the task force is something of which
I'm extremely proud. But there are other folks who and other folks in the firm who do a lot of great
work in the community as well. And the firm supports a lot of those efforts. And most big law
firms support those efforts. So whether there's a task force like ours, whether there's other kinds

(51:40):
of pro bono that people do, there is an opportunity to do that at most of these places where folks are
thinking about going. So I would encourage you to find your passion, right? Like mine is antitrust
from a corporate, you know, sort of day job perspective. But on a pro bono side, there are
a variety of pro bono cases, not all of them relate to racial justice, there are some general
pro bono kinds of things. But certainly, it's been my pleasure to work on those issues alongside my

(52:05):
colleagues at the firm, many of our corporate clients as well, who've been willing to jump in
and work on those issues to try to make the world a little bit better for everybody. That sounds
great. So it's been super exciting for me and very inspiring. I encourage folks to find their
passion, whatever their pro bono passion is, if you're in this business, find some way that you
can give back to the community, leave it better than you found it. I'm inspired. And before we

(52:30):
close, thanks so much. Want to shout out my own family, shout my wife out. My wife, she is a
lawyer as well. She tends to work on DEI issues. And my son CJ, who's a rising junior, so I want
to shout them out as well. You mentioned the things that you do when you're not doing your day job,
they help keep me sane, along with my mother-in-law, my nephew, who are also with us. So

(52:55):
want to shout all of them out, keep the family together, the family unit, as I said, I have
sisters and brothers and my dad, and they all kind of keep all the pieces duct taped together.
Yeah.
So I want to shout them out for this as we close.
She's an attorney and she's so supportive. And it doesn't get busy around there, huh?
Yeah, yeah. Well, we met in law school, right? So I'm going to say this and we'll see how this

(53:17):
plays later on, right? That, you know, she signed up for it. So we'll leave it at that. But the
family has been really supportive, both my own siblings and my parents, as well as my wife and
son and my in-laws. Everybody's been super supportive. So it'd be hard to do what I do
without them. Want to shout them out.
That's amazing. Thank you for that. I'm sure she'll appreciate that. Hopefully she's actually

(53:39):
listening.
There we are. There we are. So definitely want to do it.
Thank you very much.
I love this conversation.
Yes.
This is great. Thank you so much.
And unfortunately, we're out of time here. But thank you so much for coming on the show and
showing us basically your passionate side of what you do, because it's great when we find
passionate attorneys that enjoy their profession, but also are genuinely great people.

(54:03):
And they're willing to share their knowledge. That's amazing. Thank you.
So much appreciate it. Thank you so much. I'm honored to be here.
When Kelly asked me, I was like, absolutely. I'm more than happy to do this. And we connected on
another podcast with another one of your guests who hosted it. And so when he reached out, I was
like, yeah, if I can be useful and you think I've got something that's valuable to add, then I'm

(54:25):
happy to share it.
Thank you so much.
Thank you all.
So much.
Appreciate it.

(54:58):
Thank you.