Former longtime head of Akin’s U.S. antitrust & competition practice.
Former member of American Bar Association (ABA) Antitrust Section’s Governing Council and former chair of the section’s Mergers & Acquisitions Committee.
Spent 45 years at Akin litigating and advising on complex, high-stakes antitrust matters.

Paul retired from the partnership in January 2024. He focused his practice on providing antitrust and Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) representation regarding mergers & acquisitions (M&A) and joint ventures (JVs) investigated or challenged by government enforcement agencies. In addition, Paul extensively engaged in private litigation and antitrust counseling regarding a wide spectrum of other issues.

The hundreds of transactions and other matters where Paul provided substantive antitrust representation over his career involved industries and products across a wide swath of the American—and world—economy, including matters involving: crude oil, natural gas and NGL extraction, gathering, processing, fractionation, refining, liquefaction and regasification, pipeline and ship transportation, and storage; oilfield equipment and services, including land and deepwater drilling and completion, diamond drill bits, drill pipe, and drilling mud; geophysical surveying; industrial gases; uranium; electricity generation and transmission; coal mining and railroads; airlines; avionics and other aircraft systems; petrochemicals, coatings, polyurethane foam, and other specialty chemical products; pharmaceuticals and medical devices; hospitals and other health care providers; cement, concrete and aggregates; seamless steel pipes, tubes, and premium connections; industrial compressors and turbines; automobile dealerships; recreational vehicles; agricultural processing, including wheat and masa flour milling, cocoa processing, and wet and dry corn milling; high fructose corn syrup; grain terminals; rice, citrus fruit, milk, and other retail food products; supermarkets; cigars and pipe tobacco; inland, intracoastal and ocean shipping; computer software; intellectual property; movie theatres; radio and TV stations; sports broadcasting; newspapers and other publishing; casinos; commodity trading; automated underwater vehicles; defense contracting; advertising technology; billboards; retail money transfer services; and waste management.

Paul served as the longtime head of the firm’s U.S. antitrust & competition practice. Prior to private practice, he was a trial attorney with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Bureau of Competition, where he principally litigated merger and monopolization cases.

From 2012 to 2015, Paul was chair of the ABA Antitrust Section’s Mergers & Acquisitions Committee. During this period, the committee produced the Premerger Notification Practice Manual, (5^thEdition, 2015) and Mergers and Acquisitions: Understanding the Antitrust Issues (4^thEdition, 2015.) For five years previously, he was vice-chair of the committee, responsible for all publications including the M&A newsletter, The Threshold.

Representative Work

Represented some of the largest publicly traded oil and gas midstream companies in the United States, in FTC proceedings involving numerous multibillion-dollar M&A transactions.
Represented a large electricity producer before the U.S. Department of Justice regarding a horizontal acquisition that produced the then-largest investor-owned electric utility in the United States.
Counseled major hedge and equity funds regarding HSR and substantive merger review matters.
Represented a hospital group charged with antitrust conspiracy and monopolization in the Northern District of Indiana, and secured Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal, with prejudice, of plaintiff’s entire antitrust case.
Represented a large pharmaceutical company charged in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania with antitrust violations arising from a Hatch-Waxman patent settlement.

Represented a large investment fund group charged with price fixing and RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) claims in the Southern District of New York.
Served as one of the principal trial defense counsel to a major agribusiness corporation in one of the longest-running Clayton Act Section 7 cases ever brought by the U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division. After nine years of litigation in the Southern District of Iowa, including a two-month trial on the merits, the court granted judgment dismissing the government’s entire case, and the government did not appeal.
Represented principal creditors group in airline bankruptcy proceeding involving potential reorganization via merger with a major competitor.
Represented small farm cooperative plaintiff in the Western District of Missouri and Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals successfully establishing that the three major farm cooperative defendants had conspired to monopolize Grade A Midwest milk markets over a ten year period.
Represented large coal miner plaintiff in Western District of Wyoming case charging railroads with illegally dividing the market for rail transportation of coal.

Education
J.D., University of Wisconsin Law School, cum laude, 1974
B.A., Northwestern University, 1971

Clerkships
Wisconsin Supreme Court

Bar Admissions
District of Columbia

Recognitions

Named repeatedly to The Legal 500 US, Antitrust: Merger Control and Antitrust: Civil Litigation/Class Action: Defense.

Speeches and Publications

Panelist, “Hot Topics Under the HSR Act," ABA Antitrust Section Spring Meeting, 2016.
“Antitrust Climate Change in Washington: What In-House Counsel Need to Know,” Houston, Dallas and Austin CLE Programs, 2012.)
Moderator, “Consummated Merger Challenges: The Past Is Never Dead,” ABA Antitrust Section Spring Meeting, 2012.
“Antitrust, Pharmaceuticals, and the FTC: Recent Developments,” Philadelphia Life Sciences CLE Program, 2012.
Moderator, “The Irrelevant Market: ‘Direct Proof’ of Merger Anticompetitive Effects,” ABA Antitrust Section Spring Meeting, 2011.
Moderator, “Selling the Deal: Can the Media Help or Hinder Antitrust Clearance?” ABA Antitrust Section Spring Meeting, 2010.
“Antitrust and M&A in the Obama Administration: What Every Deal Lawyer Needs to Know,” California CLE Program 2010, New York CLE Program, 2009.
“Government Antitrust Enforcement: Recent Developments in the Energy Industry,” Houston and Dallas CLE Programs, 2009.
Moderator, “Has Whole Foods Transformed Merger Enforcement?”, ABA Antitrust Section Spring Meeting, 2009.
Moderator, “Post-Closing Review of Mergers: Recent Developments in the U.S. and Canada,” ABA Antitrust Section Brown Bag, 2008.)
“Category Management: Comparing Theories of Potential Liability Under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act,” ABA Antitrust Section Spring Meeting, 2005.
Panelist, “Fraud and Nondisclosure in Standard Setting: When Does It Violate Section 2?”, ABA Antitrust Section Spring Meeting, 2004.
“Understanding and Managing Upstream Oil and Gas Antitrust Risks,” Conference on Contract Risk Management in Upstream Oil and Gas, Houston, 2003.