Antitrust Boutique Firm Launches as Surge in Actions Continues

Antitrust attorneys from Constantine Cannon and Robins Kaplan are launching an antitrust boutique law firm, just a week after the Justice Department suit against Visa Inc. showed the Biden administration continuing its crackdown.

Former Constantine Cannon partners Matthew Cantor and Jeffrey Shinder, and former co-chair of Robin Kaplan’s antitrust and trade regulation group Kellie Lerner are starting the new firm with offices in New York and Washington DC.

“We’re in a moment where antitrust has a resurrected profile, which had languished for 50 years,” Shinder said in an interview.

Antitrust litigation has been an active arena for many law firms with the Biden administration’s aggressive enforcement. The Justice lawsuit last week against Visa accused the global payments processor of illegally monopolizing debit cards by penalizing merchants and paying potential rivals. Justice and the Federal Trade Commission also set a record in fiscal 2022 for the number of merger challenges it brought.

Regardless of whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump win the election next month, the current antitrust momentum is too strong to be undone, Lerner said.

“You can’t unscramble the egg,” she said. “What this administration has done to push forward antitrust is not something that can be pushed back in any easy way.”

The new firm, Shinder Cantor Lerner, launches with 10 partners and will offer clients alternative fee arrangements, including hybrid payment plans, Shinder said. It plans to hire 15 to 20 attorneys in the next year across both outposts.

The full-service antitrust boutique will focus on antitrust violations including anti-competitive mergers, market allocation and monopolization. The firm also expects to pick up work related to algorithmic price fixing and plans to work for plaintiffs and defendants.

Shinder represented about 60 retailers, including Walmart Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Gap Inc., in battling Visa and Mastercard Inc. over allegedly improperly fixed credit-card swipe fees. A federals appeals court initially rejected a $5.7 billion settlement of the claims, which was one of the biggest-ever US antitrust accord.

Lerner is also representing direct purchasers in a class action that alleges manufacturers including Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Michelin and Bridgestone Corp. colluded to artificially inflate prices of new replacement tires for vehicles.

Cantor said he hopes the firm will fill part of the gap between private and government antitrust enforcement. He represented StubHub, which waged anti-competition allegations against Ticketmaster and the NBA team Golden State Warriors over a ticketing partnership.

“When a monopolist or a cartel impose anti-competitive practices, at the end of the day, it’s Joe consumer who ultimately gets harmed, and that to us motivates our sort of love for this type of law,” he said.