“The guiding principle of antitrust law should be to better people’s lives,” observed Omeed Assefi, Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, US Department of Justice, as he walked students through the core framework underlying modern antitrust law. Assefi focused on the consumer welfare standard, a legal doctrine that assesses whether a business practice or corporate merger is anti-competitive based on whether it harms consumers through higher prices, lower quality, or reduced output. He then explained how the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice apply laws including the Sherman, Clayton, and Hart-Scott-Rodino Acts when examining mergers, anti-competitive agreements, and monopolization claims. Assefi pointed to recent enforcement actions, including the Google search and ad tech litigation and the Paramount-Warner Brothers merger settlement, as examples of these laws in action. He encouraged students to consider working at a U.S. attorney's office, a local district attorney's office, or a public defender's office, saying, “I don’t know of any other training ground where you can get better experience really fast.”
