Sitting torn between using your future law degree to do something meaningful as a public servant or being able to pay off your student loans by working at Cravath? As it turns out, there is a blessed middle where you can protect the little guy and afford more than ramen for dinner: antitrust. Recent moves under the Biden administration have signaled fertile ground for the body of law and a growing number of students are looking to flourish in it — and Lina Khan is channeling the momentum. From Politico:
Lina Khan had spent the day doing TV interviews and press conferences defending the administration’s new tough-on-mergers stance. Now the chair of the Federal Trade Commission joined a more hospitable crowd. Squeezed into the corner of a bar steps from the White House, she urged law students not much younger than her to join the growing antitrust movement.
“This is just the very, very, very, very beginning of this work, and we need all of you to be in this movement, to be coming into government, to bring all your skills and talents to bear,” said Khan to whoops and cheers.
While it is hard to topple monopolizing industry giants, it becomes impossible if no one is there to fight the good fight. There was a point in the history of antitrust where its ethos leaned heavily on the notion that curbing trusts was a matter of life and liberty. That spirit is kind of fundamental to the country as we know it. If Lina Khan and the soon-to-be antitrust lawyers manage to revive and maintain that spirit, who knows what the coming landscape of American businesses will look like? Presumably, there will be less Amazon.
The Next Generation of Law Students Is Obsessed With Lina Khan [Politico]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.