WilmerHale is pleased to announce that former Department of Justice Deputy Assistant Attorney General Molly Boast has joined the firm’s New York office as a partner in the Antitrust and Competition Practice. Boast joins the firm with more than 30 years of litigation experience in the public and private sector, including leadership positions at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and in private practice. Boast will be an integral member of the firm’s New York office and its global Antitrust and Competition Practice, and will lead high-profile antitrust regulatory and litigation matters for the firm’s clients.
Boast served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ’s Antitrust Division from May 2009 to February 2011. As the senior official responsible for civil enforcement, she oversaw all merger and conduct investigations, leading to several significant merger and civil non-merger resolutions, including the NBC/Comcast and Oracle/Sun Microsystems ventures. She managed 150 legal professionals in the Antitrust Division and was one of three division authors of the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines.
From 1999-2001, Boast served first as Senior Deputy Director and then as Director of the Bureau of Competition at the FTC. During the “merger wave” of those years, she was responsible for many significant competition investigations and enforcement actions and served as the bureau’s Capitol Hill spokesperson on energy and pharmaceutical industry matters.
Michelle Miller and Thomas Mueller, co-chairs of WilmerHale’s Antitrust and Competition Practice, expect Boast “to bring a depth of experience from her years of government service and private practice that will be of tremendous benefit to the firm’s clients.”
“Molly Boast is one of the top antitrust litigators in the field,” said William Perlstein, co-managing partner at the firm. “Her extensive experience at the senior levels of two government agencies and in leading complex litigation matters is a unique combination that will serve not only our antitrust and competition clients, but also our entire firm.”
Boast is well known in the New York litigation community and was previously a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, and before that at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae LLP. She has handled major antitrust litigation and governmental investigation matters, including a seminal antitrust case before the US Supreme Court. At Debevoise, Boast was the chair of the antitrust group, and at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, she chaired the litigation department.
