A. Paul Victor has been a mentor and friend for more than forty years.  He was an established leader of the U.S. and international antitrust defense bars when I joined Weil, Gotshal & Manges in 1977.  One of the first cases we worked on together was the landmark Zenith v. Matsushita litigation, and it would be seven years before the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of our client Matsushita (now Panasonic).  Those seven years were an incredible education for me in every facet of antitrust law and litigation, and Paul was one of my best teachers, along with our common mentor, antitrust legend Ira Millstein.

From the 1960’s through the 1980’s, Paul had the unique distinction of being equally versed in both antitrust and trade law.  This made him one of the rare practitioners who could handle these two diverse, and somewhat contradictory, areas equally well.  When the criminal side of antitrust picked up in the 90’s with the advent of the Department of Justice’s leniency program, Paul reinvented himself, seized the initiative and quickly became one of the top criminal antitrust lawyers in the country.  Today, he is widely known as “Dean of the Cartel Bar.”  With an indefatigable career spanning more than 50 years, Paul has defended some of the most important cartel investigations around the globe and scored crucial victories for major corporations and individuals in criminal and civil cartel cases.  He has been an inspiration to me in my own career, and our professional and personal lives have long been intertwined.