Google’s bare-knuckle outside litigation firm Williams & Connolly takes center stage Thursday when the Washington boutique tries to dent the US government’s antitrust case against the
With alumni including Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, the firm craves the limelight for prominent clients that included Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes in her fraud trial and British Petroleum Plc after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
“It’s a scrappy bunch of lawyers who like to insert themselves in the most important contests,” said Paul Dueffert, a commercial litigator who spent nearly 30 years at Williams & Connolly. “When they see a big battle, the firm likes to take part.”
The action against Google represents the Justice Department’s largest tech antitrust case since it took on
John Schmidtlein, a DC native and 30-year Williams & Connolly veteran, is leading the team. Alphabet has been leaning on Schmidtlein, who has a reputation as a steely litigator, for legal help for years.
He represented the company a decade ago in an FTC investigation over the ways Google arranges its search engine results. The investigation ended with the agency electing not to bring a lawsuit.
The Georgetown Law School graduate also has advised Google on a lawsuit from Epic Games alleging market abuse in the Android app market. That case is set for a trial in California next month.
In the early 2000s, Schmidtlein he even managed to get a slice of the Microsoft spotlight. He helped Williams & Connolly serve as lead trial counsel for nine states that opposed Justice’s settlement with the software maker.
This time, Schmidtlein must persuade a court that Google’s dominance is a product of innovations and not exclusive deals with third parties to be the default search option on web browsers.
“I don’t think anybody disputes Google has the best search engine, but the whole question is how did they get there,” said Rick Rule, chair of antitrust firm Rule Garza Howley. “From Google’s standpoint, what they have to show is there was an efficiency to have these exclusive agreements.”
Google has fought back hard against the DOJ while going to great lengths to keep some evidence out of public view.
In a separate Justice case alleging monopolization of online advertising technology, the company unsuccessfully claimed “deep-seated bias” by antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter because he had previously represented ad tech companies.
“In antitrust cases that go to core business practices that are exceptionally profitable, the company has a strong incentive to fight,” said Laura Alexander, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth director of markets and competition policy. “The alternative is to potentially lose an incredibly profitable business practice.”
Williams & Connolly declined to comment. Google did not respond to a request for comment.
Attorneys from the Big Law firms Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Ropes & Gray are working with Schmidtlein’s team at Williams & Connolly on the defense.
Trial Roots
Famed criminal defense lawyer Edward Bennett Williams helped start Williams & Connolly in 1967. “We wanted to be a very powerful firm for people in deep, deep trouble,” former colleague Joseph A. Califano Jr. said in a 1988 Washington Post article after Williams’ death.
Williams’ clients over the years included Teamsters boss James R. Hoffa and communism scaremonger Senator Joseph McCarthy. The firm he founded later represented Lt. Col. Oliver North of Iran Contra fame and President Bill Clinton during impeachment proceedings.
The boutique has stuck to its litigation roots, avoiding the Big Law path of branching to a broad array of legal specialties and locations. It rarely hires lawyers from rivals, instead recruiting from elite law schools, retaining attorneys for decades and promoting from within.
The firm attracts law students who know they want to be litigators, said Amy Savage, a Washington-based legal recruiter who has lectured on recruiting at Yale Law School. Then, “they focus on professional development instead of having them grind away,” she said.
The firm finished 2022 with 373 lawyers and profits per equity partner of $2.7 million, ranking it among the 50 most profitable firms in the US, according to data from The American Lawyer.
Amazon Work
Along with Google, fellow tech giant Amazon has increasingly turned to Williams & Connolly as its antitrust troubles mount.
Partners Heidi Hubbard and Kevin Hodges are leading Amazon’s defense in Seattle federal court against claims by the FTC and 17 state attorneys general that the company illegally monopolizes online marketplace services.
Amazon first sought Williams & Connolly’s aid in 2017 in an action brought by a private plaintiff, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The company turned to the firm again in 2019 after the FTC kicked off its investigation. Hubbard and Hodges assisted Covington & Burling with the investigation and led preparations for potential litigation, the person said.
A Williams & Connolly team, which included Schmidtlein and his antitrust practice co-chair, Jonathan Pitt, the son of former Securities and Exchange Commission chair Harvey Pitt, is also defending Amazon in three separate pending matters. They include an unfair competition lawsuit from the California attorney general and private actions tied to the company’s dominance in the shipping and e-books markets.
Nate Sutton, Amazon’s associate general counsel for competition, once worked for Williams & Connolly. He spent nearly six years at the firm starting in 2001 following a clerkship after law school, according to his LinkedIn account.
Amazon declined to comment.
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