Competition
Competition and regulatory work involves a mixture of commercial, public and (for now) European law. The general competition law prohibitions under EU and domestic law apply to all types of economic activity, and work in this area also involves a range of sector-specific regulation (eg, in the telecoms, energy and financial services sectors). It also includes merger control under EU law and the Enterprise Act 2002. The work involves a mix of regulatory and court proceedings, with claims for damages for breaches of competition law taking on a higher profile in recent years. Related areas are State aid and the rules on public sector and utility procurement. Deciding to pursue law at university was more of a “Why not?” than a “That’s for me!” moment for Laura Elizabeth John, but a stint as a civil servant confirmed to her that she was on the right path: “My decision to study law was based on no more sophisticated a reason than I was told at school that I’d be a good lawyer and that it meant I could do whatever A levels I wanted! After university, I decided instead to spend 18 months in the civil service, working on putting a bill through Parliament as a policy officer. I realised that I enjoyed law in practice and I reconnected with some of the reasons why I had decided to study it in the first place, so I decided to go back to it.” She knew from the outset that the Bar would be a more natural fit: “I preferred to be self-employed. I also like the fact that it is a very meritocratic profession; you do stand or fall on your merits.” Laura competed her pupillage at Monckton, which she describes as being “unqualifiedly positive”. The insistence that pupils leave chambers every day at 6:00pm was appreciated, as was the continual assessment process, avoiding stressful pressure points through the year and “allowing us to show how we perform under ordinary conditions, as well as offering a more accurate reflection of what day-to-day practice is like.”
High value and multi-party Although competition law is relatively broad in scope, Laura’s work focuses mostly on high-value, multi-party damages claims. “The sorts of issues that arise are often the same as any you would find in any large multi-party commercial litigation – for example, jurisdiction issues and conflict of laws – as well as more specific issues about whether competition law has been breached,” she explains. “Evaluating damages is also very complex, so I do a lot of work with expert economists and accountants to work out what the world would have looked like if the bad behaviour hadn’t occurred. You also become an expert on a really diverse range of issues as you try to get under the skin of a particular industry – for example, I’ve done cases on lightbulbs, pharmaceutical products and heavy-duty electrical equipment used in power substations. I have had to understand how all those products are manufactured, the supply chain, and the economics of the industries as a whole, in order to work with the witnesses and our experts on the detail of the arguments. That sort of variety is a huge challenge and very stimulating.” Laura goes on to explain what else competition law might encompass: “Many of my colleagues work with the regulators, either at the stage of investigating potential breaches of the law or of handling appeals in the Competition Tribunal or the European courts. There is a whole range of transactional work too; mergers, obviously, but there may also be companies that want to enter into a contract and need to know whether the terms comply with competition law. Sometimes that sort of work ends up in litigation. For example, I have worked on a case about the terms for licensing intellectual property in the telecoms sector, where Company A has sued Company B for infringing its patents, and Company B has alleged that A was in breach of competition law because it had an obligation to give a licence for use on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.”
For more chambers that work in this practice area, please use the “Pupillage index” starting on p519.
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