Laurence T Sorkin

Larry has more than 30 years of experience in both antitrust counseling and litigation. He has counseled clients on all aspects of antitrust law, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, competitor collaborations, distribution and licensing practices, and price discrimination. He has represented clients before the Federal Trade Commission, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, and state and foreign antitrust authorities, and has litigated a wide range of antitrust issues in federal and state courts. He is the co-author of Understanding the Antitrust Laws and a member of the Advisory Board of the BNA Antitrust and Trade Regulation Report and the Board of Editors of the Lexis/Nexis Antitrust Report. Larry is recognized among the top antitrust lawyers in New York by Chambers USA: Leading Lawyers for Business (2008). He is also listed in the 2008 Euromoney Legal Media Group Guide to the World's Leading Competition and Antitrust Lawyers and the 2007/08 PLC Global Competition Counsel Handbook. Larry has extensive experience advising clients in merger transactions and is consulted frequently on Hart-Scott-Rodino premerger notification matters. He has coordinated the successful clearances of numerous U.S., European and other premerger filings of complex cross-border transactions. Larry has defended numerous criminal and civil antitrust investigations and litigated a large number of major private antitrust actions. He has represented clients in U.S. and cross-border investigations of international cartels and related treble damage litigation in a variety of industries, including vitamins, thermal fax paper, sodium gluconate, rubber chemicals, and hydrogen peroxide. He has participated in cases where the extraterritorial application of the U.S. antitrust laws was at issue, including the recent Empagran case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Larry has represented banks and other financial institutions in a variety of antitrust matters, and successfully defended NYCE Corporation (owned at the time by a group of major U.S. banks) in an antitrust action brought by a competitor seeking access to NYCE’s automated teller machine network. He has also successfully represented clients in hostile takeover cases, deceptive advertising cases, and trade cases (including the successful defense of an International Trade Commission antidumping proceeding brought against European producers of magazine-grade paper). He has represented the Dramatists Guild, the trade association of American playwrights, for many years, and successfully represented the Guild in the defense of an antitrust action that resulted in the negotiation of the contract used today by playwrights and producers for Broadway productions. He also participated on behalf of the Guild in the landmark case involving a disputed claim of co-authorship of the prize-winning Broadway musical “Rent.”