Partner, Co-chair of the Litigation & Trial Practice Group, Alston & Bird LLP
Adam Biegel is co-chair of Alston & Bird’s Litigation & Trial Practice Group and former co-chair of its Antitrust Team. He has substantial experience representing clients on antitrust counseling and litigation matters, including those involving government and internal investigations, mergers and joint ventures, pricing and distribution, compliance counseling and training, pre-merger reviews under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act, and multidistrict litigation. He regularly represents clients before the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general, and in federal courts.
Adam is recognized for his antitrust experience by Chambers USA and selected to The Best Lawyers in America®, including his recognition as “Lawyer of the Year” for Antitrust Litigation in Washington, D.C., in 2022. He is a longtime member of the American Bar Association Antitrust Law Section’s leadership, currently serving as co-chair of its In-House Counsel Task Force and previously having served on its board, and chaired its Corporate Counseling Committee, Long Range Planning Committee, and Spring Meeting conference. He also serves on the board of the Federalist Society’s antitrust practice group.
Adam served as a law clerk to the Hon. Frank M. Hull, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Before attending law school, he worked as a newspaper reporter in Arkansas and on the legislative staff of U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch.
Partner in the Antitrust & Competition Practice Group, Sheppard Mullin
John’s practice focuses on civil and criminal antitrust matters, including mergers & acquisitions, strategic counseling and compliance, and global cartel investigations, where he represents clients before the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, Federal Trade Commission, and international and state antitrust enforcement authorities.
Prior to private practice, John was in the Mergers I Division of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition for several years. While with the FTC, he investigated, challenged, and negotiated settlements in a number of potentially anti-competitive business combinations in the aerospace, technology, consumer products, defense, healthcare, and pharmaceutical industries and received an Award for Meritorious Service for work on merger litigation.
John frequently speaks and writes on antitrust issues. He was the lead editor on the American Bar Association, Section of Antitrust Law’s Energy Antitrust Handbook, and has held leadership positions in that organization.
Partner, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
Rich’s primary practice area is complex litigation, with a particular emphasis on antitrust matters. He frequently represents plaintiffs and defendants in private litigation, in addition to representing parties and third parties in the context of DOJ, FTC, and State Attorney General investigations and litigation. He also advises clients regarding transactions—both their own and those of others—including mergers or acquisitions that may be subject to review by federal, state, or international antitrust authorities. His experience includes both criminal and civil antitrust jury trials, and he is relied upon by clients for clear and practical guidance shaped by years of experience in antitrust enforcement and private practice.
Rich rejoined the firm in December 2013 after serving for four years as the Director of the Bureau of Competition at the Federal Trade Commission. He directed the FTC’s antitrust enforcement activity during a period when approximately 80 enforcement actions were initiated in a wide variety of industries. Major matters included, among others, two victories in the Supreme Court (involving pay-for-delay and state action), successful challenges to hospital mergers, and Intel and Google consent orders. He also participated directly in drafting and implementing the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines.
Prior to serving as Bureau Director, Rich was a partner in the firm’s Washington D.C. office from 2001 to 2009. From October 1998 to June 2001, he served as an Assistant Director of the Bureau of Competition, in charge of the Health Care Services and Products Division. The work of that Division focused on antitrust enforcement in the health care industry, including anticompetitive practices and mergers involving health care providers, and anticompetitive conduct in the pharmaceutical industry.
Before initially entering private practice in 1985, Rich worked as a trial attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and also served as Acting Deputy Director of the Division’s Office of Policy Planning and as Acting Assistant Chief of the Division’s Energy Section.
Research Manager, American Economic Liberties Project
Laurel manages AELP’s team of policy analysts and coordinates with expert advisors and fellows to develop original research and policy briefs. An experienced attorney, she also frequently writes and speaks about high profile court cases that impact the economic liberties of the American people.
In private practice, Laurel represented firms of all sizes– from startups to Fortune 500 companies– spanning a wide variety of industries, from software to generic pharmaceuticals to semiconductors. At Comar Mollé LLP, a boutique firm that specializes in serving startups and investors, she provided strategic counseling on employment, privacy, and transactional matters. At Goodwin Procter LLP, a global biglaw firm, she litigated high stakes patent and complex commercial disputes and counseled clients on technology transactions.
Before joining AELP, Laurel researched competition policy issues for the Balanced Economy Project in Europe. Earlier in her career, she analyzed legislation promoting access to essential medicines at the World Health Organization, coordinated patent law training workshops for Vietnamese research institutions through the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture, and developed public outreach materials for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has also developed and taught courses on topics ranging from legal practice skills to emerging policy issues.
Partner, Global Chair, Antitrust and Competition, Fried Frank
Bernard A. Nigro Jr. (“Barry”) is Global Chair of Fried Frank's Antitrust and Competition Department. Barry previously served as the Department of Justice’s Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust and the Federal Trade Commission’s Deputy Director for the Bureau of Competition.
During his almost 40 years of practice and government service, Barry has handled hundreds of civil and criminal matters in dozens of industries ranging from concrete to high tech and everything in between. For example, Barry has been involved in some of the largest M&A transactions during the past decade, served as the antitrust compliance monitor in United States v. Apple Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 2013), worked on a variety of cartel matters, and counseled on complex compliance and litigation matters. While in government, Barry supported the rollout of the Procurement Collusion Strike Force, an initiative to modernize the merger review process, and revisions to the merger guidelines and remedies policies.
Barry is recognized as a leader by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, a “Leading Lawyer” by Legal 500 in Antitrust: Merger Control, and a “Global Leader” by Who’s Who Legal: Competition. Clients say "Barry is very adept at getting deals across the finish lines. He knows the inside game very well," “he is a skilled and knowledgeable antitrust lawyer with a very practical approach,” and “knows how to marry business and antitrust.” Other clients describe him as “the rare combination of DOJ and FTC expertise that is invaluable to clients who need to understand the agencies’ latest thinking” and note that “his decades of experience generally, and recent experience as the number-two lawyer in the Antitrust Division, make him a knowledgeable and skilled counselor on a broad array of government enforcement matters.” Clients say he is “fabulous” and “figures out quickly what’s important and focuses energies there.” Clients also report that “[n]o one compares to Barry Nigro in terms of goodwill” and note his “years of experience make his counsel and perspective, particularly seeing what is coming down the road, exceptional.”
Barry’s commitment to public service includes having served as Vice Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Antitrust Law (numbering over 10,000 members from across the globe), President of the George Washington University Law Alumni Association, a member of the Executive Committee of Higher Achievement’s DC President’s Council, a member of St. Albans School’s Development Committee, a member of Bishop Ireton High School’s Campaign Leadership Committee, and a member of Georgetown University’s Class of 1982 Executive Committee, among many other roles.
Alexander Hamilton Professor of Business Law, George Washington University Law School
Barak Richman’s primary research interests include the economics of contracting, new institutional economics, antitrust, and healthcare policy. His work has been published in the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Law and Social Inquiry, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs. In 2006, he co-edited with Clark Havighurst a symposium volume of Law and Contemporary Problems entitled "Who Pays? Who Benefits? Distributional Issues in Health Care,” and his book Stateless Commerce was published by Harvard University Press in 2017.
Professor Richman represented the NFL Coaches Association in an amicus curiae brief in American Needle v. The Nat’l Football League, which was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2010 and again in Brady v. The Nat’l Football League in 2011. His recent work challenging illegal practices by Rabbinical Associations was featured in the New York Times. And in 2020, he was a member of the Working Group on Platform Scale at Stanford University’s Program on Democracy and the Internet that proposed middleware as a solution to stem the economic and political power of dominant internet platforms.
Professor Richman is also a Senior Scholar at the Clinical Excellence Research Center at the Stanford University School of Medicine and is currently a special counsel for competition policy at the Department of Health and Human Services. He won Duke Law School's Blueprint Award in 2005 and was named Teacher of the Year in 2010. He has had visiting appointments at Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford.
Professor Richman has an AB, magna cum laude, from Brown University, a JD, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under Nobel Laureate in Economics Oliver Williamson. He served as a law clerk to Judge Bruce M. Selya of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and from 1994-1996 he handled international trade legislation as a staff member of the United States Senate Committee on Finance, then chaired by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Partner, Wilson Sonsini
David Berger specializes in corporate governance and M&A litigation as well as rapid response shareholder activism and corporate governance risk oversight. David’s practice is an unusual blend of corporate governance advisory work and litigation, and he is nationally recognized for his expertise in both the boardroom and the courtroom. David also represents directors and companies in internal investigations and public companies on disclosure and SEC proceedings.
David has represented many leading technology and other companies in a variety of governance matters, including Google, Hewlett-Packard, Tesla, Genentech, Dropbox, Box, TD Ameritrade, Copart, Lumentum, Coherent, and Chevron. In addition, David represents many leading investment banks and private equity firms, including Morgan Stanley, SilverLake, TPG, Oak Hill, Francisco Partners, and Qatalyst Partners.
David is a senior fellow at NYU’s Center for Corporate Governance and Finance, and is a visiting professor at NYU Law School. David taught M&A Litigation and was a visiting Fellow in the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School in 2018. He has also been a visiting lecturer at a number of other leading law schools, including Duke, Stanford, Hebrew University, and Tel Aviv University, among others.
Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray is the founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, a law and strategy firm in Washington, D.C., focused on constitutional and regulatory issues.
Mr. Gray worked in the White House for twelve years, first as counsel to the Vice President during the Reagan administration and then as White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush. In the Reagan administration, he was Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, for which he wrote the original Executive Order 12291 requiring cost-benefit analysis and White House review of regulations (later renumbered as current EO 12866). In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Gray was in charge of judicial selection and was also instrumental in the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and a cap-and-trade system for acid rain emissions. In 1993, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal. Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Gray was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Special Envoy to Europe for Eurasian Energy.
Mr. Gray practiced law for 25 years at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and was chairman of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2002. Early in his career, Mr. Gray helped to develop the Business Roundtable and served as its first counsel. He is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former adjunct professor at NYU Law School (teaching energy and environmental law). Mr. Gray is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council, the Federalist Society, Reason Foundation, and the Trust for the National Mall.
Mr. Gray earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Crimson, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Mr. Gray served in the United States Marine Corps, and after law school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Of Counsel, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
Leo E. Strine, Jr., is Of Counsel in the Corporate Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Prior to joining the firm, he was the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court from early 2014 through late 2019. Before becoming the Chief Justice, he had served on the Delaware Court of Chancery as Chancellor since June 22, 2011, and as a Vice Chancellor since November 9, 1998.
In his judicial positions, Mr. Strine wrote hundreds of opinions in the areas of corporate law, contract law, trusts and estates, criminal law, administrative law, and constitutional law. Notably, he authored the lead decision in the Delaware Supreme Court case holding that Delaware’s death penalty statute was unconstitutional because it did not require the key findings necessary to impose a death sentence to be made by a unanimous jury.
Mr. Strine holds long-standing teaching positions at Harvard and University of Pennsylvania, where he has and continues to teach diverse classes in corporate law addressing, among other topics, mergers and acquisitions, the role of independent directors, valuation, and corporate law theories. He is a member of the American Law Institute, and currently serves as an advisor on the project to create a restatement of corporate law.
Mr. Strine also serves as the Michael L. Wachter Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, the Ira M. Millstein Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School and a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance. From 2006 to 2019, Mr. Strine served as the special judicial consultant to the ABA’s Committee on Corporate Laws. He also was the special judicial consultant to the ABA’s Committee on Mergers & Acquisitions from 2014 to 2019.
Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Paul S. Atkins was sworn into office as the 34th Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 21, 2025, after being nominated by President Donald J. Trump on January 20, 2025, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 9, 2025.
Prior to returning to the SEC, Chairman Atkins was most recently chief executive of Patomak Global Partners, a company he founded in 2009. Chairman Atkins helped lead efforts to develop best practices for the digital asset sector. He served as an independent director and non-executive chairman of the board of BATS Global Markets, Inc. from 2012 to 2015.
Chairman Atkins was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as a Commissioner of the SEC from 2002 to 2008. During his tenure, he advocated for transparency, consistency, and the use of cost-benefit analysis at the agency. Chairman Atkins also represented the SEC at meetings of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets and the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Economic Council. From 2009 to 2010, he was appointed a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Before serving as an SEC Commissioner, Chairman Atkins was a consultant on securities and investment management industry matters, especially regarding issues of strategy, regulatory compliance, risk management, new product development, and organizational control.
From 1990 to 1994, Chairman Atkins served on the staff of two chairmen of the SEC, Richard C. Breeden and Arthur Levitt, ultimately as chief of staff and counselor, respectively. He received the SEC’s 1992 Law and Policy Award for work regarding corporate governance matters.
Chairman Atkins began his career as a lawyer in New York, focusing on a wide range of corporate transactions for U.S. and foreign clients, including public and private securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions. He was resident for 2½ years in his firm's Paris office and admitted as conseil juridique in France.
A member of the New York and Florida bars, Chairman Atkins received his J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1983 and was Senior Student Writing Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review. He received his A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Wofford College in 1980.
Originally from Lillington, North Carolina, Chairman Atkins grew up in Tampa, Florida. He and his wife Sarah have three sons.
Commissioner, United States Securities and Exchange Commission
Hester M. Peirce was appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was sworn in on January 11, 2018.
Prior to joining the SEC, Commissioner Peirce conducted research on the regulation of financial markets at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was a Senior Counsel on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where she advised Ranking Member Richard Shelby and other members of the Committee on securities issues. Commissioner Peirce served as counsel to SEC Commissioner Paul S. Atkins. She also worked as a Staff Attorney in the SEC’s Division of Investment Management. Commissioner Peirce was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) and clerked for Judge Roger Andewelt on the Court of Federal Claims.
Commissioner Peirce earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Case Western Reserve University and her JD from Yale Law School.
Time for a Checkup: Evaluating the Withdrawal of the Health Care Antitrust Guidelines
Adam Biegel, John D. Carroll, Richard A. Feinstein, Laurel Kilgour, Bernard A. Nigro, Barak D. Richman
In 1996, the FTC and DOJ issued Statements of Antitrust Enforcement Policy in Health Care. ...
Topics
Book Review: NOT Accountable, by Philip Howard (Part One)
Many of the grave and chronic maladies of modern American governance, including a loss of...
Deep Dive Episode 200 – Corporate Social Responsibility, Investment Strategy, and Liability Risks
David J. Berger, C. Boyden Gray, Leo E. Strine, Paul S. Atkins, Hester M. Peirce
Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) investing is growing in popularity, especially after major investment firm BlackRock signaled support...