Section of Antitrust

 



Charles F. (Rick) Rule


 

Charles F. (Rick) Rule is a partner resident in Fried Frank's Washington, DC and New York offices and head of the firm's antitrust practice. He joined the firm in 2001.

Mr. Rule's practice focuses on providing U.S. and international antitrust advice to a variety of high-profile corporations, counseling, structuring joint ventures (including business-to-business exchanges) and representing major corporations in connection with investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission.

Mr. Rule has represented clients such as Eli Lilly & Company, Microsoft Corporation, US Airways Inc., WorldCom, Inc., the National Basketball Association, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., and Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. He has also been involved in the antitrust clearance of some of the highest-profile mergers in recent years, including advising NYNEX in its merger with Bell Atlantic (now known as Verizon Communications) and serving as Exxon's lead counsel in its successful merger with Mobil Oil Corporation (now known as ExxonMobil Corporation).

Mr. Rule served as William Baxter's special assistant, in 1982, in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. He served as acting head of the Division for almost half of 1985 and was appointed to the job permanently in late 1986, becoming the youngest person ever to be confirmed to the position of Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division. Mr. Rule continued as the Assistant Attorney General through the remainder of the Reagan Administration and for the first several months of the George Bush, Sr. Administration. He received the Edmund J. Randolph Award from the Department of Justice in 1988. Following his departure from the Justice Department in 1989, Mr. Rule was a partner and head of the antitrust practice at the Washington, DC law firm of Covington & Burling.

Mr. Rule has served as a distinguished adjunct professor of law at American University's Washington College of Law. He was the inaugural chair of the Corporations, Securities and Antitrust Practice Group of the Federalist Society, and, from 1989-91, was chair of the Economics Committee of the ABA Antitrust Section. He is currently a member of the Advisory Board of BNA's Antitrust & Trade Regulation Report and also a member of the advisory boards of the Washington Legal Foundation and the Landmark Legal Foundation.

Mr. Rule is included among the world's leading antitrust lawyers in the Chambers Global 2000-2001 listing. His biography appears in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the East, Who's Who in American Law and similar publications.

Mr. Rule has written extensively and is a frequent lecturer on a variety of antitrust and regulatory topics, and he contributes a regular column on antitrust issues to the Daily Deal. (See attached publications list.)

Mr. Rule received his JD in 1981 from the University of Chicago Law School and his BA, summa cum laude, in 1978 from Vanderbilt University. He served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Daniel M. Friedman of the old United States Court of Claims (now the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit). He is on the Visiting Committee for the University of Chicago Law School. He is admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia.

 




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