Law360: Competition Group of the Year: O’Melveny

January 24, 2019

Law360 has named O’Melveny’s competition team a 2018 “Practice Group of the Year.” The firm’s practice, consisting of more than fifty lawyers, scored numerous headline-grabbing wins in 2018, including defending AT&T’s merger with Time Warner cable against a DOJ challenge.

Dan Petrocelli, who led the merger’s defense in court, was one of many O’Melveny lawyers who moved their lives to DC for the first half of the year in order to work on the case. “Everybody was committed to the single-minded objective of winning the case. We had the righteous side of the case but whenever you're up against the government, especially in a very high-profile case, it's risky business,” Petrocelli said. “The government is used to winning these cases.”

Other notable victories for the team included negotiating client Samsung Electronics’ exit from multidistrict litigation seeking US$3 billion in damages for price-fixing accusations as well as defending clients from three nonpublic DOJ investigations.

“Nobody will ever know about those and we consider those massive victories," practice group co-chair Ian Simmons said. “We know how to handle matters so nobody ever hears about them. You don't make a career out of them. You get the client off the first exit ramp.”

Click here to view O’Melveny’s award profile.