Preparing for Trial

An antitrust case is different from some other types of litigation in a few respects. First, cases tend on average to be bigger and be more complicated. There are often very significant issues of document production and document control and expense and how logistically to even review and analyze the documents that are produced when you are talking about very big corporations. The issues are also more technical. One challenge in an antitrust case is that it works on several levels. There is the technical level of assessing economic evidence, undercutting the other side's expert testimony and developing your own. Then there is the level of trying to boil this down and explain to the judge (who might hear three antitrust cases every five years ) what it is all about. Then the challenge, ultimately, if the case goes to trial, is to explain the case to a jury. Thus, an antitrust litigator has to be able to handle very technical economic issues but at the same time be able to adequately describe them in simpler terms.

Antitrust cases are very fact intensive more so than many other kinds of cases. The key is really understanding how the particular marketplace at issue in the case works. I often view an antitrust case as having two parts of the case. The "who did what to whom" part of the case what was the conduct and then the effects issues. Part of the reason I am an antitrust lawyer is that I am much more interested in the effects questions. The effects questions are unique to an antitrust case. Even if the bad things or the supposedly bad things were done, did it matter to the marketplace? Did it cause damages, and how do you analyze that? That is the technical area of the case.