David B. Lawrence

I study how law shapes the behavior of business organizations, with a particular focus on antitrust and the design of the public institutions that govern private power. Firms plan and act in response to market forces—shaped in part by antitrust law—and to legal obligations implemented through agencies and courts. But the law shapes corporate behavior only through its implementation by governing institutions: the courts, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and the White House. I examine how those institutions guide business conduct and thus structure markets, and how they can do so more effectively.

I did this work for nearly fifteen years at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, where I served most recently as Policy Director, reporting to Senate-confirmed leadership across administrations. I was the principal legal author of the 2023 Merger Guidelines and the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines, developed the doctrinal architecture of the United States’ monopolization cases against Google, Apple, Live Nation, and Visa, and oversaw the Division’s appeals and dispositive legal issues. On detail to the Federal Communications Commission, I led the interagency task force that reviewed the T-Mobile/Sprint transaction. Earlier, I clerked for Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Richard J. Holwell of the Southern District of New York.

My scholarship pursues the same project, most recently in the N.Y.U. Law Review and the Antitrust Law Journal. I organize this work around three overlapping areas: (1) the substance of antitrust law; (2) the procedures and institutions that govern corporate conduct; and (3) the institutional design challenges and opportunities presented by new technologies.

I am prepared to teach Antitrust, Civil Procedure, Law and Technology, and Business Associations, with additional interests in AI and Law, Torts, and Administrative Law.