Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County
George R. La Noue is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He has served as a trial expert in twenty cases involving public procurement preferences. For thirty years, he was Director of the Project on Civil Rights and Public Contracts at UMBC which recently contributed 289 public contracting disparity studies to the Library of Congress. He has been a consultant to nine governments and trial expert in thirty cases where the validity of disparity studies was at issue.
Prof. La Noue can be reached by email at glanoue@umbc.edu.
Partner, Bona Law PC
Steve Cernak is a respected leader in the international antitrust and competition law community. He served as in-house antitrust attorney at General Motors for more than 20 years, ultimately responsible for global antitrust compliance, merger reviews and litigation. As a result, Steve has experience tackling the toughest antitrust issues, and explaining them to everyone in an organization from the CEO to workers in the factories.
After leaving GM, Steve spent seven years at Schiff Hardin’s Ann Arbor office, serving clients both inside and outside the automotive community. As he did at Schiff Hardin, Steve now assists clients big and small on a wide array of competition and consumer protection matters, including compliance programs; joint efforts with competitors; pricing strategies and programs; and merger reviews and filings.
Steve has served in the leadership of the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association for more than 20 years, and is currently the Section Chief Marketing Officer. That position keeps him connected to the global community and up-to-date on developments.
Steve is a prolific writer for The Antitrust Lawyer Blog, WoltersKluwer’s AntitrustConnect Blog and various Law360, Lexis and Westlaw publications. The second edition of his textbook of antitrust summaries and materials, Antitrust Simulations, was published in 2019 by West Academic. He updates his Antitrust in Distribution and Franchising annually for publication in the LexisNexis Antitrust Law & Strategy Series. Steve is also a frequent commenter on antitrust developments, both on social and mainstream media.
Steve is a regular teacher at both the University of Michigan Law School and the Thomas M. Cooley Law School Corporate & Finance LLM program at Western Michigan University. He also taught for three years at Wayne State University Law School.
Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Elyse Dorsey is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Elyse's practice encompasses a wide array of antitrust and competition matters across the globe. She is uniquely situated to advise clients in domestic and international competition matters, given her combination of government and private practice experience.
Elyse has a focus in cutting edge competition issues, as well as privacy, data security, and consumer protection matters. She has represented clients across levels of government, from state agencies to the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to joining Kirkland, Elyse served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. Her work at the Antitrust Division covered a spectrum of legal and policy matters, including IP and technology issues, the Division's appellate and amicus brief programs, and its international and competition policy efforts. Elyse joined the Division from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, where she served as Attorney Advisor to Commission Noah Joshua Phillips. While at the Commission, she advised on key cases, matters, and policies affecting industries across the economy--from digital and tech to pharmaceuticals and hospitals and more.
Elyse is a recognized thought leader in the antitrust and competition communities. She has been a frequent nominee and recipient of antitrust writing awards for her scholarship in this space. She has also served as an adjunct professor at George Mason University's Scalia Law School for several years, helping to launch their Antitrust LL.M. program; and she previously served as a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, United States Department of Justice
Michael Kades is a Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division with a focus on civil enforcement.
Prior to coming to the US Department of Justice, Michael was director for markets and competition policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. His research focused on competition and antitrust enforcement, with an emphasis on consumers, wages, equality, and innovation. He testified before Congress multiple times and authored several reports and articles on antitrust policy.
Prior to joining Equitable Growth, Michael worked as antitrust counsel for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), on detail to the from the Federal Trade Commission. He worked on the CREATES Act, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act, and the Trade Secrets Protection Act, all of which Congress enacted. He was also the primary staffer on the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act and the Consolidation Prevention and Competition Protection Act.
Michael spent 20 years investigating and litigating antitrust actions as an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission. From 2013-15, he was the Deputy Chief Trial Counsel for the Bureau of Competition where he participated in a number of merger investigations and litigations. From 2006-2013, served as attorney advisor to Chairman Jon Leibowitz. He oversaw the Commission’s strategy to address anticompetitive patent settlements, worked on the 2010 horizontal merger guidelines, and advised the Chairman on antitrust issues. From 1997-2006, he was an attorney in the Health Care Products Services. He argued In re Schering Plough and In re South Carolina Board of Dentistry before the Commission as well as appearing in federal court. He played a leading role in FTC v. Mylan in which the Commission obtained $100 million in disgorgement. While at the Commission, he received the Chairman’s Award and the Paul Rand Dixon Award.
Kades is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Professor of Law Bruce H. Kobayashi’s background in economics makes him a vital part of the law and economics focus at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Since coming to Scalia Law in 1992, he has been a frequent contributor to economics and law and economics journals. He previously served as a senior economist with the Federal Trade Commission, a senior research associate with the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and an economist with the U.S. Department of Justice. He recently served as the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Economics.
Professor Kobayashi was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles, earning his BS in Economics and System Science (1981), and his MA (1982) and PhD (1986) in Economics.
He teaches Litigation and Dispute Resolution Theory, Quantitative Forensics, and Legal and Economic Theory of Intellectual Property.
Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance and Professor of Law, University of Missouri School of Law
Thomas Lambert is the Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance and Professor of Law at the University of Missouri School of Law.
Prof. Lambert’s scholarship focuses on antitrust, corporate and regulatory matters. He is the author of How to Regulate: A Guide for Policymakers (Cambridge Univ. Press 2017) and co-author of Antitrust Law: Interpretation and Implementation (5th ed., Foundation Press, 2013). He has also authored or co-authored numerous book chapters and more than 20 journal articles in such publications as the Antitrust Bulletin, the Boston College Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, the Texas Law Review and the Yale Journal on Regulation. He blogs regularly at Truth on the Market, a site focused on academic commentary on antitrust, business and economic legal issues.
In 2017, Professor Lambert received the University of Missouri’s Kemper Faculty Fellowship (awarded annually to five professors throughout the university for exemplary teaching). He has also received the law school’s Blackwell Sanders Award for Teaching Excellence and the university-wide Gold Chalk Award for excellence in graduate teaching. He is a three-time winner of the University of Missouri Law School’s Shook Hardy & Bacon Excellence in Research Award, which is awarded annually for most outstanding faculty scholarship.
Before entering academia, Professor Lambert practiced law in the Chicago office of Sidley Austin and was a John M. Olin Fellow at Northwestern University School of Law and the Center for the Study of American Business (now the Murray Weidenbaum Center) at Washington University. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Partner, Baker Botts L.L.P.
Taylor Owings is a partner in the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group of Baker Botts L.L.P. She represents clients in civil merger and non-merger matters both in front of government agencies and in private litigation. She also counsels clients on the application of antitrust law to their business activities, with special experience in issues related to the digital economy.
Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Owings served as Senior Counsel and Chief of Staff in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2018 to 2021. In that role, Ms. Owings was a key advisor to the Assistant Attorney General on the application of antitrust law to technology industries, including in the Department of Justice’s review of the business practices of market-leading online platforms and in the application of antitrust law to the exercise of intellectual property rights and standard setting organizations. As Chief of Staff of the Antitrust Division, Ms. Owings was responsible for ensuring the high quality of all public advocacy issued by the Division, including court filings, policy statements, and speeches.
Ms. Owings has experience crafting both trial and appellate strategy in headline-making antitrust litigations. She has argued in the First and Fourth Circuits. Earlier in her career, she clerked for the Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and for the Honorable Richard J. Leon on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Ms. Owings handles all aspects of merger review. She draws on her first-hand experience investigating and reviewing mergers at the Antitrust Division to advise clients and to represent them in front of the agencies. She has special experience in merger matters with complex legal questions, for instance vertical mergers, the acquisition of a nascent or potential competitor, and the implications of a merger on innovation and data accumulation.
Partner, Litigation Department, Paul Hastings
Michael Murray is co-chair of the Antitrust and Competition practice at Paul Hastings and represents clients in high-stakes mergers and acquisitions and antitrust litigation and investigations. Based in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office, Michael is Chambers ranked and brings significant government antitrust and competition experience, having most recently served as the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice (DOJ), where he oversaw the work of approximately 350 lawyers and 50 economists. In that capacity, Michael supervised DOJ’s merger investigations, conduct matters and litigation for several years.
Michael is the rare antitrust lawyer who maintains both an active merger control practice and a bustling litigation practice. In 2025, for example, he shepherded over $65 billion of transactions through global merger control regimes, including a litigated merger challenge in the U.S., while also representing over a dozen clients in major antitrust litigation. In that year, he won awards for both his merger work and his litigation matters. Chambers USA describes Mike for having “an encyclopedic knowledge of antitrust law [who] can recite different issues for different circuits.”
Michael also is a partner in the Appellate, Regulatory and Complex Litigation practices at Paul Hastings. He brings significant government experience to a practice consisting of preparing and litigating challenges to agency rulemaking, adjudication or other activity, having served as an associate deputy attorney general at DOJ, where he oversaw the Civil Division’s defense of high-profile rulemaking challenges and other agency actions. Earlier in his career, Michael clerked for the Honorable Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Honorable Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He also served as an AUSA for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Partner, Litigation Department, Paul Hastings
Michael Murray is co-chair of the Antitrust and Competition practice at Paul Hastings and represents clients in high-stakes mergers and acquisitions and antitrust litigation and investigations. Based in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office, Michael is Chambers ranked and brings significant government antitrust and competition experience, having most recently served as the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice (DOJ), where he oversaw the work of approximately 350 lawyers and 50 economists. In that capacity, Michael supervised DOJ’s merger investigations, conduct matters and litigation for several years.
Michael is the rare antitrust lawyer who maintains both an active merger control practice and a bustling litigation practice. In 2025, for example, he shepherded over $65 billion of transactions through global merger control regimes, including a litigated merger challenge in the U.S., while also representing over a dozen clients in major antitrust litigation. In that year, he won awards for both his merger work and his litigation matters. Chambers USA describes Mike for having “an encyclopedic knowledge of antitrust law [who] can recite different issues for different circuits.”
Michael also is a partner in the Appellate, Regulatory and Complex Litigation practices at Paul Hastings. He brings significant government experience to a practice consisting of preparing and litigating challenges to agency rulemaking, adjudication or other activity, having served as an associate deputy attorney general at DOJ, where he oversaw the Civil Division’s defense of high-profile rulemaking challenges and other agency actions. Earlier in his career, Michael clerked for the Honorable Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Honorable Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He also served as an AUSA for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
United States Attorney, Eastern District of California
Mr. Grant was appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi to serve as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California beginning on August 11, 2025. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), he was further appointed by the district court effective December 9, 2025.
Mr. Grant is a veteran of the Department of Justice, having served twice in Washington, D.C.: from 1991 to 1993 as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel, and from 2017 to 2021 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). During his tenure at ENRD, he supervised more than a hundred Department litigators advancing the interests of the United States and its agencies in both enforcement and defensive matters, both civil and criminal.
In addition to his service in the Department, Mr. Grant has decades of experience in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. That experience includes arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and numerous other federal and state courts.
Mr. Grant served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (retired) and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during the Supreme Court’s October 1994 Term. Earlier he served as a law clerk to Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas.
Mr. Grant grew up in Modesto, California and raised his family in Sacramento County. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics (1986) and a law degree (1990).
Special Counsel for Native American Affairs to Gov. Stitt
Ryan Leonard has extensive experience litigating cases in federal and state courts, and specializes in solving complex business problems for his clients. Ryan practices primarily in the areas of business law and litigation, insurance law, receivership law and receiverships, oil and gas litigation, and Native American and Tribal law. He maintains the highest Martindale-Hubbell Preeminent Attorney Recognition (“AV”) rating for skill and ethics for attorneys based on professional peer reviews, and has been selected annually since 2016 as a top-rated “Super Lawyer” for business litigation.
Prior to entering private practice, Ryan served as a state prosecutor in the District Attorney’s office in Canadian County, Oklahoma. Ryan also served for four years (1994-98) as a Legislative Assistant to former U.S. Senator Don Nickles in Washington, D.C., in which capacity he served as the Senator’s chief legislative aide on issues involving the federal judiciary, Indian Affairs, transportation, agriculture and natural resources.
Ryan is very active in the local community, currently serving as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Mercy Hospital- Oklahoma City. Ryan co-founded and is a past president of the Downtown Club of Oklahoma City, and previously served on the Board of Trustees of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, the Board of Directors of the Central Oklahoma Red Cross, the Central Oklahoma YMCA and KIPP Charter School, the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors for the Oklahoma Academy of State Goals, the Legal Ethics Committee of the Oklahoma Bar Association and was a member of Leadership Oklahoma Class XIX. Ryan has also volunteered his time pro bono for Oklahoma Lawyers for Children, serving children at risk in the foster care system. At a younger age, Ryan earned the rank of Eagle Scout.
In 2008, Ryan was appointed by the Governor as a Commissioner representing the State of Oklahoma on the national Uniform Law Commission, and was reappointed in 2014 and 2018. In 2015, Ryan was appointed by the President of the national organization to the Executive Committee, and as chair of the national Legislative Council. Ryan has served on numerous committees within the organization, including drafting committees implementing the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements (facilitating international contracts) and drafting a Model Tribal Probate Code. Ryan co-chairs the Committee on Attendance, and serves on the Committees on Scope and Program and State and Federal Relations.
Through his law practice, Ryan is also regularly appointed by multiple Courts as a “Receiver” over troubled businesses, tasked with either managing, rehabilitating, or liquidating the business for the benefit of creditors. In 2018, at the request of the Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner, the Oklahoma County District Court appointed Ryan as “Interim CEO” of Union Mutual Insurance Company, an Oklahoma-domiciled insurance company, that was successfully rehabilitated and emerged from receivership. Ryan served as Interim CEO for a period of six months during which time he identified and installed a permanent corporate leadership team. In addition, in 2019, Ryan was appointed by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma to serve as Chairperson of a three-member Commission to assist the Federal Court in determining just compensation to multiple landowners in a federal eminent domain pipeline action.
In 2020, Ryan was hired by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt to serve as his Special Counsel for Native American Affairs. In this capacity, Ryan assists the Governor and his administration on issues arising from the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma, through which the Court ruled the Creek Nation reservation still exists within the State of Oklahoma for purposes of criminal jurisdiction.
In January 2021, as authorized by Oklahoma law, Governor Stitt designated Ryan as the lead negotiator for the state in the discussions with Oklahoma's Native American tribes to address the foundational jurisdictional issues raised by the McGirt decision.
Ryan earned his law degree from the University of Oklahoma, and graduated magna cum laude from Boston College. Ryan also attended the L’Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Strasbourg, France. In his spare time, he enjoys coaching his children's activities, reading history, travel and archaeology. He is the co-author of “Opala: In Faithful Service to the Law,” a biography on former Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Marian Opala, as well as "Principles and Perseverance: The Life of Don Nickles."
Ryan is admitted to practice before the Oklahoma Supreme Court and all Oklahoma state courts, the federal courts of the Western and Northern Districts of Oklahoma, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Tax Court.
Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig
Jennifer Weddle is the Co-Chair of Greenberg Traurig's American Indian Law Practice and has wide-ranging experience in complex regulatory and jurisdictional issues, with a focus in Indian law, handling a variety of matters for tribal and non-tribal clients. She has a dynamic, inter-disciplinary practice that centers on providing strategies for resolving complex jurisdictional problems. Much of her practice focuses in the areas of tribal economic development and natural resources development. Jennifer also has U.S. Supreme Court experience, including serving as one of the attorneys for the respondent in Nevada v. Hicks (2001) and representing the petitioners in Ute Mountain Ute Tribe v. Padilla (2012) and Grand Canyon Skywalk Development, LLC v. Grand Canyon Resort Corporation (2013) and cert stage amici in Saginaw-Chippewa Tribe v. NLRB (2016) and United States v. Cooley (2020) and amici on the merits in Lewis v. Clarke (2017), U.S. v. Washington (2018), Carpenter v. Murphy (2018), McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020), and United States v. Cooley (2021).
Jennifer's work also includes negotiations for mineral leasing employment matters and representation before federal agencies. She has also been involved in civil litigation, working on numerous complex federal, state and tribal litigation matters, including class action tort litigation and large commercial disputes. Her transactional experience includes oil and gas renewables projects throughout the west, as well as Endangered Species Act work. Jennifer frequently assists tribes, banks and non-bank entities with financing and regulatory matters with Indian law components. Jennifer has wide-ranging project siting experience, including the application of NEPA, NHPA, and other environmental laws on tribal and public lands, including with respect to large linear multi-state energy and infrastructure projects. Jennifer has deep transactional, regulatory and litigation experience involving very complex matters with both legal and policy components.
Jennifer is past President of the National Native American Bar Association and past two-term Chair of the Federal Bar Association Indian Law Section. She currently serves as the Tenth Circuit Representative on the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, a role she has held since 2018, spanning the evaluations for more than two dozen federal judicial nominees at every level of the federal courts. She is a ’00 graduate of Harvard Law School and a ’97 graduate of the University of Michigan (Classical Languages and Literature).
Partner, Bona Law PC
Steve Cernak is a respected leader in the international antitrust and competition law community. He served as in-house antitrust attorney at General Motors for more than 20 years, ultimately responsible for global antitrust compliance, merger reviews and litigation. As a result, Steve has experience tackling the toughest antitrust issues, and explaining them to everyone in an organization from the CEO to workers in the factories.
After leaving GM, Steve spent seven years at Schiff Hardin’s Ann Arbor office, serving clients both inside and outside the automotive community. As he did at Schiff Hardin, Steve now assists clients big and small on a wide array of competition and consumer protection matters, including compliance programs; joint efforts with competitors; pricing strategies and programs; and merger reviews and filings.
Steve has served in the leadership of the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association for more than 20 years, and is currently the Section Chief Marketing Officer. That position keeps him connected to the global community and up-to-date on developments.
Steve is a prolific writer for The Antitrust Lawyer Blog, WoltersKluwer’s AntitrustConnect Blog and various Law360, Lexis and Westlaw publications. The second edition of his textbook of antitrust summaries and materials, Antitrust Simulations, was published in 2019 by West Academic. He updates his Antitrust in Distribution and Franchising annually for publication in the LexisNexis Antitrust Law & Strategy Series. Steve is also a frequent commenter on antitrust developments, both on social and mainstream media.
Steve is a regular teacher at both the University of Michigan Law School and the Thomas M. Cooley Law School Corporate & Finance LLM program at Western Michigan University. He also taught for three years at Wayne State University Law School.
Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Elyse Dorsey is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Elyse's practice encompasses a wide array of antitrust and competition matters across the globe. She is uniquely situated to advise clients in domestic and international competition matters, given her combination of government and private practice experience.
Elyse has a focus in cutting edge competition issues, as well as privacy, data security, and consumer protection matters. She has represented clients across levels of government, from state agencies to the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to joining Kirkland, Elyse served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. Her work at the Antitrust Division covered a spectrum of legal and policy matters, including IP and technology issues, the Division's appellate and amicus brief programs, and its international and competition policy efforts. Elyse joined the Division from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, where she served as Attorney Advisor to Commission Noah Joshua Phillips. While at the Commission, she advised on key cases, matters, and policies affecting industries across the economy--from digital and tech to pharmaceuticals and hospitals and more.
Elyse is a recognized thought leader in the antitrust and competition communities. She has been a frequent nominee and recipient of antitrust writing awards for her scholarship in this space. She has also served as an adjunct professor at George Mason University's Scalia Law School for several years, helping to launch their Antitrust LL.M. program; and she previously served as a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, United States Department of Justice
Michael Kades is a Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division with a focus on civil enforcement.
Prior to coming to the US Department of Justice, Michael was director for markets and competition policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. His research focused on competition and antitrust enforcement, with an emphasis on consumers, wages, equality, and innovation. He testified before Congress multiple times and authored several reports and articles on antitrust policy.
Prior to joining Equitable Growth, Michael worked as antitrust counsel for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), on detail to the from the Federal Trade Commission. He worked on the CREATES Act, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act, and the Trade Secrets Protection Act, all of which Congress enacted. He was also the primary staffer on the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act and the Consolidation Prevention and Competition Protection Act.
Michael spent 20 years investigating and litigating antitrust actions as an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission. From 2013-15, he was the Deputy Chief Trial Counsel for the Bureau of Competition where he participated in a number of merger investigations and litigations. From 2006-2013, served as attorney advisor to Chairman Jon Leibowitz. He oversaw the Commission’s strategy to address anticompetitive patent settlements, worked on the 2010 horizontal merger guidelines, and advised the Chairman on antitrust issues. From 1997-2006, he was an attorney in the Health Care Products Services. He argued In re Schering Plough and In re South Carolina Board of Dentistry before the Commission as well as appearing in federal court. He played a leading role in FTC v. Mylan in which the Commission obtained $100 million in disgorgement. While at the Commission, he received the Chairman’s Award and the Paul Rand Dixon Award.
Kades is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Professor of Law Bruce H. Kobayashi’s background in economics makes him a vital part of the law and economics focus at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Since coming to Scalia Law in 1992, he has been a frequent contributor to economics and law and economics journals. He previously served as a senior economist with the Federal Trade Commission, a senior research associate with the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and an economist with the U.S. Department of Justice. He recently served as the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Economics.
Professor Kobayashi was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles, earning his BS in Economics and System Science (1981), and his MA (1982) and PhD (1986) in Economics.
He teaches Litigation and Dispute Resolution Theory, Quantitative Forensics, and Legal and Economic Theory of Intellectual Property.
Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance and Professor of Law, University of Missouri School of Law
Thomas Lambert is the Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance and Professor of Law at the University of Missouri School of Law.
Prof. Lambert’s scholarship focuses on antitrust, corporate and regulatory matters. He is the author of How to Regulate: A Guide for Policymakers (Cambridge Univ. Press 2017) and co-author of Antitrust Law: Interpretation and Implementation (5th ed., Foundation Press, 2013). He has also authored or co-authored numerous book chapters and more than 20 journal articles in such publications as the Antitrust Bulletin, the Boston College Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, the Texas Law Review and the Yale Journal on Regulation. He blogs regularly at Truth on the Market, a site focused on academic commentary on antitrust, business and economic legal issues.
In 2017, Professor Lambert received the University of Missouri’s Kemper Faculty Fellowship (awarded annually to five professors throughout the university for exemplary teaching). He has also received the law school’s Blackwell Sanders Award for Teaching Excellence and the university-wide Gold Chalk Award for excellence in graduate teaching. He is a three-time winner of the University of Missouri Law School’s Shook Hardy & Bacon Excellence in Research Award, which is awarded annually for most outstanding faculty scholarship.
Before entering academia, Professor Lambert practiced law in the Chicago office of Sidley Austin and was a John M. Olin Fellow at Northwestern University School of Law and the Center for the Study of American Business (now the Murray Weidenbaum Center) at Washington University. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Partner, Baker Botts L.L.P.
Taylor Owings is a partner in the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group of Baker Botts L.L.P. She represents clients in civil merger and non-merger matters both in front of government agencies and in private litigation. She also counsels clients on the application of antitrust law to their business activities, with special experience in issues related to the digital economy.
Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Owings served as Senior Counsel and Chief of Staff in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2018 to 2021. In that role, Ms. Owings was a key advisor to the Assistant Attorney General on the application of antitrust law to technology industries, including in the Department of Justice’s review of the business practices of market-leading online platforms and in the application of antitrust law to the exercise of intellectual property rights and standard setting organizations. As Chief of Staff of the Antitrust Division, Ms. Owings was responsible for ensuring the high quality of all public advocacy issued by the Division, including court filings, policy statements, and speeches.
Ms. Owings has experience crafting both trial and appellate strategy in headline-making antitrust litigations. She has argued in the First and Fourth Circuits. Earlier in her career, she clerked for the Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and for the Honorable Richard J. Leon on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Ms. Owings handles all aspects of merger review. She draws on her first-hand experience investigating and reviewing mergers at the Antitrust Division to advise clients and to represent them in front of the agencies. She has special experience in merger matters with complex legal questions, for instance vertical mergers, the acquisition of a nascent or potential competitor, and the implications of a merger on innovation and data accumulation.
Partner, Litigation Department, Paul Hastings
Michael Murray is co-chair of the Antitrust and Competition practice at Paul Hastings and represents clients in high-stakes mergers and acquisitions and antitrust litigation and investigations. Based in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office, Michael is Chambers ranked and brings significant government antitrust and competition experience, having most recently served as the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice (DOJ), where he oversaw the work of approximately 350 lawyers and 50 economists. In that capacity, Michael supervised DOJ’s merger investigations, conduct matters and litigation for several years.
Michael is the rare antitrust lawyer who maintains both an active merger control practice and a bustling litigation practice. In 2025, for example, he shepherded over $65 billion of transactions through global merger control regimes, including a litigated merger challenge in the U.S., while also representing over a dozen clients in major antitrust litigation. In that year, he won awards for both his merger work and his litigation matters. Chambers USA describes Mike for having “an encyclopedic knowledge of antitrust law [who] can recite different issues for different circuits.”
Michael also is a partner in the Appellate, Regulatory and Complex Litigation practices at Paul Hastings. He brings significant government experience to a practice consisting of preparing and litigating challenges to agency rulemaking, adjudication or other activity, having served as an associate deputy attorney general at DOJ, where he oversaw the Civil Division’s defense of high-profile rulemaking challenges and other agency actions. Earlier in his career, Michael clerked for the Honorable Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Honorable Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He also served as an AUSA for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
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