Salary · Antitrust and competition
Antitrust Attorney Salary 2026: Law Firm vs In-House
Fiscal 2025 put 2,006 Hart-Scott-Rodino filings on the federal docket. The agencies staff that calendar in the hundreds. Companies do not publish how many of them employ a dedicated antitrust lawyer. This page is the dated law-firm versus in-house pay table that those two facts produce.
The calendar absorbs deals. It does not staff your desk.
The 2026 enforcement calendar absorbed 2,006 Hart-Scott-Rodino filings. Federal agencies staff that docket in the hundreds. Companies do not publish how many of them employ a dedicated antitrust lawyer. The pay table is what those two facts actually cost.
The FTC and DOJ 48th Annual HSR Report, covering 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025 and released 2 July 2026, states that companies notified the agencies of 2,006 transactions. That is a count of reportable deals. Deals, not headcount.
A general counsel pricing an antitrust seat, and an antitrust attorney reading an offer, are looking at the same three machines. The docket tells you how much work there is. It does not tell you who is on payroll. Every number is cited below.
- 2,006
- Hart-Scott-Rodino transactions reported in fiscal 2025 — the docket the 2026 enforcement calendar actually absorbs, not a lawyer census.
- FTC and DOJ, 48th Annual HSR Report, 2 July 2026
- 434
- Authorized Antitrust Division attorneys in the FY 2026 enacted appropriation, against 776 positions and a $245 million budget.
- DOJ Antitrust Division FY 2027 Budget Request at a Glance
- 549
- FTC Promoting Competition FTE in the FY 2026 request, down from 600 in the FY 2025 enacted column, including 201 Merger and Joint Venture Enforcement FTE.
- FTC Congressional Budget Justification Fiscal Year 2026, 30 May 2025
- 41
- Second Requests in FY 2025 — 20 from the Commission, 21 from the Division — on 1,944 adjusted reported transactions.
- FTC and DOJ, 48th Annual HSR Report, FY 2025
A general counsel who types antitrust lawyer salary into a search bar is usually trying to price one of three machines: a lockstep firm associate, an in-house Expert Attorney, or a federal trial attorney. Sartori’s New York interview cohort (1,675 structured interviews) shows the company-side buyer is still, more often than not, purchasing the first of those machines by the hour.
The docket is a count of deals, not a census of antitrust lawyers.
The 2026 antitrust lawyer salary table
Three published cash machines set US antitrust pay in 2026: the Milbank lockstep at matching firms, ACC in-house title medians, and the General Schedule cap for agency trial attorneys.
On 2 June 2026, Above the Law reported that Milbank raised associate base salaries by $10,000 to $20,000 by class year, effective 1 July 2026. The same-day Law360 Pulse report put the new floors at $235,000 and pay reaching $455,000. Antitrust associates at matching firms sit on that lockstep; it is not an antitrust-practice scale. NALP’s 2025 US Associate Salary Survey, published 28 May 2025 from office reports as of 1 January 2025, put the overall first-year median at $200,000 across 437 offices, with $225,000 the modal figure at 32.0 percent of offices — which is why the July 2026 lockstep is a matching-firm rate, not a US median.
In-house cash is a title stack, not a lockstep. The Association of Corporate Counsel 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey Executive Summary, data effective 1 March 2025 and released 16 September 2025, puts Attorney median base at $148,000, Expert Attorney at $227,000, Associate General Counsel at $245,000, and GC/CLO at $330,000. The same survey states that practice areas such as securities, antitrust, and bankruptcy tend to pay higher base and total compensation, and it does not print a numeric median for antitrust specialists. The ranking is the published finding a general counsel can actually audit.
The public-sector comparator is statutory. OPM Salary Table 2026-DCB, effective January 2026, sets the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington locality at 33.94 percent and caps GS-15 at Executive Schedule Level IV, $197,200, with GS-15 Step 1 at $169,279. A New York Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Bureau was posted in April 2026 at $83,594 to $178,463 plus $4,000 location pay. That is the cash a state enforcement seat actually advertises, not a discounted lockstep.
A chief legal officer who treats those figures as one band will overpay the in-house seat or underprice the panel. Lockstep and Am Law posting bands are the price of bought hours. ACC title medians are the price of a held specialist, before equity. The General Schedule cap is the price of staffing the docket. An antitrust boutique’s 2026 experienced-hires page published a first-through-eighth-year scale of $250,000 to $460,000, a notch above the matching-firm ceiling, which is why a company competing with that exit market on cash alone is not competing on the in-house machine.
| Seat | Who earns / who pays | Published cash | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lockstep first-year associate | Law-firm associate (matching firms) | $235,000 base | 1 July 2026 | Milbank announcement, 2 June 2026 |
| Lockstep eighth-year / senior associate | Law-firm senior associate (matching firms) | $455,000 base | 1 July 2026 | Milbank announcement, 2 June 2026 |
| Antitrust boutique associate scale | Boutique associate, 1st–8th year | $250,000–$460,000 | 2026 careers page | Axinn experienced-hires page |
| Am Law Antitrust and Competition associate | Washington, D.C., 2–6 years | $235,000–$390,000 | 2026 posting | Gibson Dunn careers page |
| Antitrust Associate – Mergers | Washington, D.C., 3–6 years, Second Request | $260,000–$390,000 | 2026 posting | Wilson Sonsini careers page |
| In-house Attorney (all practices) | Corporate law department, individual contributor | $148,000 median base / $160,000 median total cash | 1 March 2025 | ACC 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey |
| In-house Expert Attorney (all practices) | Specialist individual contributor, often the antitrust seat when it exists | $227,000 median base / $260,000 median total cash | 1 March 2025 | ACC 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey |
| Associate General Counsel (all practices) | Specialty AGC reporting to the general counsel | $245,000 median base / $294,000 median total cash | 1 March 2025 | ACC 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey |
| General Counsel / Chief Legal Officer | Pays the figure; rarely the antitrust specialist | $330,000 median base / $410,000 median total cash | 1 March 2025 | ACC 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey |
| DOJ / FTC trial attorney, GS-15 | Federal enforcer, Washington locality | GS-15 Step 1 $169,279; cap $197,200 | January 2026 | OPM Salary Table 2026-DCB |
| NY Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Bureau | State enforcer, New York City | $83,594–$178,463 + $4,000 location pay | April 2026 posting | NY OAG Antitrust Bureau posting |
Cravath’s memorandum dated 18 November 2025 set 2025 year-end and special bonuses — Class of 2018 drew $115,000 plus a $25,000 special — and left January 2026 bases on the prior $225,000 first-year floor. The June 2026 lockstep reset did not republish a 2026 year-end bonus; that scale had not been announced as of 11 September 2026 and is omitted here. For the full eight-rung matching-firm ladder, see the 2026 BigLaw associate salary scale. Broader in-house bands, not antitrust-sliced, sit on the in-house counsel salary guide.
NY Antitrust Bureau AAG floor
April 2026 posting; plus $4,000 location pay on top of the $83,594–$178,463 band.
NY OAG Antitrust Bureau posting ↗The general counsel who pays, and the attorney who earns it
The same dollar is an offer to one reader and a budget line to the other. The in-house title stack is how a company holds an antitrust specialist. The lockstep is how it buys the hours when it does not.
In that same cohort, 71 of 94 general counsel and heads of legal at companies with an active US M&A pipeline over a 24-month window told Sartori they had no dedicated in-house antitrust lawyer and bought Hart-Scott-Rodino and Second Request hours from outside counsel. That is the company-side default this page is written against. A head of legal at a healthcare acquirer with revenue above $5 billion, speaking in that same cut, told us the last HSR cycle had burned the M&A group, which is why they were willing to clear an Expert Attorney above the Attorney median rather than run another filing on a generalist.
When the dedicated seat exists, the ACC 2025 title taxonomy is the map: individual-contributor attorneys are the most specialized; senior management operates as generalists. A dedicated antitrust lawyer is typically an Expert Attorney, Senior Attorney, or specialty associate general counsel reporting into the general counsel or chief legal officer — not a stand-alone antitrust department at a mid-market company. The same survey, data effective 1 March 2025, found Attorney median base 16 percent higher with prior law-firm experience, and 39 percent higher for Attorneys from a top-20 law school. Chief legal officers at companies with revenue above $5 billion earn 44 percent more base and 173 percent more total target compensation than CLOs at companies below $1 billion. Those premia are all-practice; they are the closest published lever a general counsel has when an antitrust specialist is on the table.
The company buys hoursThe company holds the specialist
- Panel hours The general counsel keeps Hart-Scott-Rodino, Second Requests and trials on an outside firm. No antitrust specialist sits on payroll.
- Expert Attorney / specialty AGC A named in-house specialist instructs the panel, owns counseling and serial-filer hygiene, and still buys trial depth.
- Deputy or GC with the docket At most companies the chief legal officer remains a generalist. Antitrust is a report, not a department.
A chief legal officer is deciding whether to create a seat or to keep buying the hours.
- Short-incentive coverage is broad. The ACC 2025 survey puts short-term incentive eligibility at 83 percent of Attorneys (median target 15 percent), 92 percent of Senior Attorneys (20 percent), 93 percent of associate general counsel (25 percent), and 96 percent of GC/CLO seats (35 percent).
- Long-term incentive is the real split. Long-term incentive eligibility is 17 percent at Attorney, 43 percent at Senior Attorney, 42 percent at Expert Attorney, 59 percent at associate general counsel, and 63 percent at GC/CLO — which is why a lockstep associate comparing base cash to an in-house offer is usually reading the wrong line.
- Size moves the specialist more than title. Attorneys at companies above $5 billion in revenue show median base 27 percent higher and total compensation 35 percent higher; associate general counsel at the same size split show median base 36 percent higher and total compensation 75 percent higher.
- The panel does not retire when you hire. Second Requests and monopolization trials remain a buy from outside counsel even after an Expert Attorney is on payroll. The in-house seat is counseling, filing hygiene, and instruction — not a substitute for the lockstep machine on a 2R.
The attorney who earns the 2026 figure sits on a named practice label, not on generic litigation.
- Live firm labels are specific. Employer pages accessed in 2026 use Antitrust and Competition, Antitrust Associate – Mergers, and Trial Attorney. A Washington Antitrust and Competition associate posting asked for 2 to 6 years, substantive antitrust knowledge, and ideally Department of Justice or Federal Trade Commission service.
- The mid-level gate is the Second Request. A Washington Antitrust – Mergers posting asked for 3 to 6 years, experience in both the substance and the process of Second Request compliance, and the ability to run a 2R review including a team of associates and contract attorneys.
- Agency alumni are an explicit pipeline. An antitrust boutique’s experienced-hires page welcomes applications from the Antitrust Division and the Bureau of Competition. That is an exit market for agency lawyers, not a company payroll line.
- Federal entry is a separate machine. The Division’s 2026–27 Honors Program, updated 25 August 2026, estimates 22 permanent hires across Washington, Chicago, New York and San Francisco. Those seats pay the General Schedule, not lockstep, and they are how the calendar itself is staffed.
| Buyer | Seat they post or purchase | 2026 clock pressure |
|---|---|---|
| Company with no dedicated antitrust lawyer | General counsel / M&A legal buys outside hours | Junior HSR-prep hours receded after 19 March 2026; Second Request and trial hours did not |
| Company with an Expert Attorney or specialty AGC | In-house specialist still instructs a panel on Second Requests and trials | Monopolization remedies and serial-filer compliance keep the senior seat busy |
| U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division | Trial Attorney (civil, criminal, or policy) | FY 2026 attorney authorization held flat at 434; criminal filings rose |
| FTC Bureau of Competition | Mergers, anticompetitive practices, health care, technology enforcement | Promoting Competition FTE cut from 600 to 549; experienced-attorney openings named in D.C., Dallas, Seattle |
| Large-state attorney general | Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Bureau | State coalitions tried Live Nation after the United States settled; California sued megamergers after a federal pass |
Most companies still buy Hart-Scott-Rodino hours. They do not staff a dedicated desk.
Two thousand tickets, not a private-practice census
Hart-Scott-Rodino tickets are not the same universe as announced M&A. The 2026 enforcement calendar absorbs the reportable slice. It does not absorb every deal a board announced.
The docket is a count of deals, not a census of antitrust lawyers. Fiscal 2025, in the HSR report released 2 July 2026, recorded 2,006 reported transactions against 2,031 in FY 2024; adjusted transactions, the Second-Request baseline, were 1,944 against 1,973. Combined merger enforcement actions fell from 32 to 18. The share of Hart-Scott-Rodino deals valued at more than $1 billion rose to 31.8 percent in FY 2025, from 13.5 percent in 2016. Agencies received clearance to conduct an initial investigation in approximately 9.7 percent of adjusted reported transactions. That clearance step is the first one that typically pulls in outside antitrust counsel and economists.
Announced M&A is a larger tape. Bloomberg, on 2 January 2026, put announced M&A for US targets at $2.04 trillion in 2025, up 63 percent, with 324 announced deals exceeding $1 billion against 246 in 2024. Wells Fargo’s January 2026 M&A Market Pulse, citing LSEG as of 31 December 2025, put US announced volume at $2.3 trillion across 12,007 deals, down in count from 13,453 in 2024, with sponsor activity at $1.2 trillion across 6,229 deals. Fewer tickets, more value: that mix is why hours concentrate on megadeals and Second Requests rather than on a 2021-style filing factory. Junior first-year lockstep antitrust seats still track firm-wide class size, not the HSR count.
Federal seats that process the calendar are bounded. The Antitrust Division FY 2026 enacted line is 434 attorneys, 776 positions, $245 million; the FY 2027 request holds those attorney and position counts. The FTC FY 2026 Congressional Budget Justification, transmitted 30 May 2025, puts the agency at 1,100 FTE and a $383.6 million program level, with Promoting Competition moving from 600 FTE and $212.528 million (FY 2025) to 549 FTE and $189.018 million (FY 2026), a cut of 51 FTE. Direct merger-and-joint-venture enforcement moves from 224 FTE to 201 FTE. Those FTE include attorneys, economists and support; they are not a count of “antitrust attorneys.” The Bureau of Competition attorney-hiring page accessed in September 2026 named experienced openings in Washington (Mergers I, II and IV; Anticompetitive Practices II; Health Care; Technology Enforcement), plus Dallas and Seattle in American Competition Enforcement. The Commission has eight regional offices; the competition-attorney openings on that page are not posted in all eight.
There is still no official US antitrust-attorney census. A 31 March 2026 firm news item describes the ABA Antitrust Law Section as having 12,000-plus members; the Section’s own composition includes attorneys and non-lawyers from private firms, in-house departments, agencies, the academy and law schools. Treat 12,000 as a community size. One Am Law firm’s GCR 100 2026 profile (28 November 2025) reports office-level antitrust staffing — Illinois 16 partners, 2 counsel, 11 associates; New York 13 partners, 14 associates; Washington 17 partners, 1 of counsel, 8 associates; Texas 4 partners, 3 associates — and a firm statement of more than 400 Hart-Scott-Rodino filings in 2024, against FY 2024’s 2,031 reported transactions. That is one platform’s self-report, not a national headcount, and it is firm-side context for a company reader, not the spine of this page.
Thresholds and fees set which 2026 closings even reach that calendar. An FTC Competition Matters post dated 20 January 2026 put the size-of-transaction threshold at $133.9 million effective 17 February 2026, with filing fees from $35,000 to $2,460,000 by deal size. Vacatur of the 2024 form, taken up in the next section, does not touch those thresholds. A general counsel who is still pricing “HSR work” as a junior-associate commodity is reading last year’s mix.
A form came and went. The guidelines stayed.
The 2026 US antitrust hiring clock is a vacated notification form, a retained merger-guideline framework, a deal cycle that got bigger but not more numerous, and a split between federal and state monopolization remedies.
Junior filing hours recedeSenior merger and monopolization remain
- The form recedes Filers returned to the pre-2025 Hart-Scott-Rodino form after vacatur. Notification-prep hours at the junior end came down while the appeal proceeds.
- The guidelines stay Staff were told to keep using the 2023 Merger Guidelines. Labor, serial-acquisition and ecosystem theories did not snap back to a 2010 reboot.
- States try their own case A state coalition took a live monopolization trial after the United States settled on behavioral terms. State desks became a second enforcement buyer.
The 2024 HSR Final Rule, 89 Fed. Reg. 89216, took effect on 10 February 2025 and loaded every reportable deal with narrative overlaps, supervisory deal-team documents and investor charts. The Eastern District of Texas vacated it on 12 February 2026 in Chamber of Commerce v. FTC. The Fifth Circuit, in an unpublished order dated 19 March 2026, denied the Commission’s motion for a stay. The Premerger Notification Office then accepted the pre-10 February 2025 form immediately. Junior notification-prep hours receded from that date; Second Request and litigation seats did not. Frequent-filer in-house counsel still need a senior person who can switch forms on short notice while the appeal is pending.
Analysis did not reset with the form. On 18 February 2025 the FTC announced that the joint 2023 Merger Guidelines remain in effect as the framework for merger-review analysis. A general counsel staffing an Antitrust – Mergers seat in 2026 is still hiring Guideline-era fluency — labor, serial acquisitions, ecosystems — not a 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines reboot. The in-house seat that can write that white paper is an Expert Attorney or specialty associate general counsel, not a first-year lockstep hire.
Conduct work moved on two other tracks. The Commission on 5 September 2025 voted to accede to vacatur of the Non-Compete Clause Rule, which ends the 2024–25 surge in blanket-ban counseling and does not end no-poach or wage-fix work: the FTC and DOJ Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers issued 16 January 2025 still treat wage-fixing and no-poach as potentially criminal, and a Joint Labor Task Force was directed on 26 February 2025. Robinson-Patman is selective, not a revival: the Southern Glazer’s suit filed 12 December 2024 remained pending, while the PepsiCo suit was dismissed without prejudice on 22 May 2025.
Two monopolization clocks sit on company payrolls whether or not a dedicated antitrust lawyer does. In United States v. Google, the District of Columbia remedies opinion of 2 September 2025 rejected Chrome and contingent Android divestiture and imposed behavioral remedies for six years, including a ban on exclusive distribution contracts covering Search, Chrome, Google Assistant and Gemini. In the Live Nation matter, the United States executed a behavioral term sheet on 5 March 2026; 33 states plus the District of Columbia rejected it, and a jury on 15 April 2026 found liability on all tried counts. California’s Antitrust Law Section, on its 2026 matters page, was simultaneously challenging megamergers after a federal pass. State Assistant Attorney General seats became career-relevant, not a footnote to the Honors Program. The New York bureau’s own posting asked for five or more years including antitrust or complex litigation, New York admission and residence, and a two-year commitment.
Serial-filer hygiene is now a priced risk. On 26 August 2026 the Department of Justice announced a proposed $250 million civil penalty against a private-equity sponsor for alleged Hart-Scott-Rodino violations across at least 16 transactions, described as more than 20 times any prior Division HSR penalty, against a complaint that the sponsor had been required to make more than 100 filings since 2021. That is a sponsor-desk demand, not a junior-filer demand: Item 4(c)/(d) hygiene at counsel and senior depth. A parallel overlay survives the form vacatur: Section 857 of the NDAA for FY 2024 requires some filers to submit a copy of the HSR filing to the Department of War, which is why defense-industrial-base deals still need a mid-level who can run a second package. Criminal filings at the Division rose from 9 (FY 2023) to 20 (FY 2024) to 27 (FY 2025) on the table updated 9 December 2025. Cartel seats and agency-alumni hiring follow that series; they do not move the lockstep first-year number.
What we see when a company tries to fill it
We have worked the New York associate market for more than 10 years, for companies and for firms, on antitrust-adjacent mid-level seats. Over the trailing three years we closed 33 associate searches, 93 percent of them completed, on a typical 6-to-12-week timeline.
Sartori maps about 67,000 lawyers in New York. That coverage is a density read for the associate market we search; it is not a count of US antitrust attorneys, a figure no official source publishes. The global research program behind that city map runs to nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles, with quarterly market surveys since 2019. Mandate telemetry is a smaller unit: 33 closed New York associate searches over three years, of which 11 were antitrust or competition-adjacent mid-level seats (years 3 to 6). Counter-offers appeared on 37 percent of the 33-file book. Median offer-to-acceptance was 11 working days.
Four of those 11 antitrust-adjacent files ran past the twelve-week end of our typical 6-to-12-week timeline, all of them on conflicts with the company’s outside-counsel panel rather than on shortlist quality. That is the segment where we place slowly. A general counsel who has already given the Second Request to a panel firm will not, in those files, run a parallel in-house hire until the panel relationship is explicitly redrawn. We cannot see a dedicated-desk census from our own records either: what 71 of 94 company-side respondents told us is an interview finding, not a headcount of US in-house antitrust lawyers.
Of 48 New York antitrust associates in that same cohort who were weighing an in-house move over an 18-month window, 31 expected the ACC Senior Attorney median total cash to arrive with a lockstep-shaped bonus attached. It does not. The lockstep year-end bonus is cash; the in-house machine pays long-term incentive to a minority of Senior Attorneys, not a thirteenth lockstep check. A chief legal officer who matches the lockstep mid-level on base to win that candidate is buying a firm expectation the in-house machine is not built to pay.
Public cashPrivate cash
- General Schedule and AAG bands Statutory or posted public pay. The calendar itself is staffed here. A company does not match these numbers to hire in-house.
- In-house title stack ACC medians by title, plus size, school and prior-firm premia, plus equity. The machine a general counsel actually controls.
- Matching-firm lockstep The rate a company pays when it buys the hours. It is also the expectation an associate carries into an in-house negotiation.
Two company files, anonymized
A private-equity-backed industrials platform with a serial Hart-Scott-Rodino cadence and no dedicated antitrust lawyer asked us to test an Expert Attorney seat against another year of panel hours. The general counsel’s instruction, as told to us, was that the company would buy the Second Request before it created a seat that sat empty between deals. We closed the search in 10 weeks, inside the 6-to-12-week band, at a cash package priced against the ACC Expert Attorney median base of $227,000 rather than against the lockstep mid-level. Offer to signature took 11 working days. The panel retained the next 2R.
A healthcare acquirer above the ACC $5 billion revenue split wanted to hire a specialty associate general counsel and, in the first briefing, asked us to match a lockstep fifth-year. The file was one of the four that ran past twelve weeks: the company’s panel firm asserted the live Second Request, and the chief legal officer would not post the in-house seat until that instruction was rewritten. We closed in week 14 on a package that used the ACC associate-general-counsel median base of $245,000 as the cash anchor and a long-term incentive to bridge what the lockstep candidate would not concede. A 37 percent counter-offer rate is the firm-side weather on this search line; this file drew one, and the candidate still moved.
The in-house seat and the countercyclical practice are owned by sibling pages — when in-house pays for merger control, and what happens to the seat when deal volume falls. This page is the US pay table. If the brief is to put an antitrust lawyer on a company payroll, start from in-house counsel recruiting; if the brief is a mid-level Antitrust – Mergers associate, start from associate recruiting.
Antitrust attorney salary 2026: common questions
What is the 2026 antitrust lawyer salary at a US law firm versus in-house?
On matching lockstep firms a 2026 first-year base is $235,000 and an eighth-year base is $455,000, effective 1 July 2026. In-house, the Association of Corporate Counsel 2025 survey (data effective 1 March 2025) puts Attorney median base at $148,000 and Expert Attorney at $227,000, with antitrust ranked as a premium specialty but without a published antitrust-only dollar. Federal GS-15 trial attorneys in the Washington locality cap at $197,200 on the January 2026 OPM table. Year-end lockstep bonuses for 2026 had not been announced as of 11 September 2026.
How many US antitrust attorneys does the 2026 enforcement calendar absorb?
The Justice Department's Antitrust Division is budgeted at 434 attorneys for FY 2026, and the FTC requested 549 Promoting Competition FTE. There is no official census of private-practice or in-house antitrust lawyers. The ABA Antitrust Law Section is described as having 12,000-plus members, a community that includes non-lawyers, students and international members, not a practicing-lawyer headcount. Fiscal 2025 produced 2,006 HSR filings and 41 Second Requests.
Do companies staff a dedicated in-house antitrust lawyer?
The ACC 2025 survey of 1,632 US in-house professionals ranks antitrust among premium specialties and does not publish how many departments employ a dedicated antitrust lawyer. When the seat exists, it typically sits as an Expert Attorney, Senior Attorney or specialty associate general counsel reporting to the general counsel, not as a stand-alone department at mid-market companies. Sartori's New York interview cohort finds most company-side buyers still purchase Hart-Scott-Rodino hours from outside counsel.
What does a federal antitrust trial attorney earn in Washington in 2026?
OPM's 2026 Washington-Baltimore-Arlington table caps GS-15 pay at $197,200, with GS-15 Step 1 at $169,279. GS-14 runs from $143,913 to $187,093; GS-13 from $121,785 to $158,322. The New York Attorney General's Antitrust Bureau posted Assistant Attorneys General in April 2026 at $83,594-$178,463 plus $4,000 location pay.
Did the 2026 HSR form change what companies pay for merger-control hours?
The Eastern District of Texas vacated the 2024 HSR Final Rule on 12 February 2026, and the Fifth Circuit denied a stay on 19 March 2026, so filers returned to the pre-2025 form. That pull-down hits junior notification-prep hours, not Second Request or monopolization seats. The 2023 Merger Guidelines remained the framework as of the FTC's 18 February 2025 announcement. Size-of-transaction threshold is $133.9 million from 17 February 2026.
How fast does Sartori close a New York antitrust associate search?
Typical New York associate timelines run 6 to 12 weeks, with a median 11 working days from offer to acceptance and a 93 percent completion rate across 33 closed searches over three years. Counter-offers appeared on 37 percent of those files. Of 11 antitrust-adjacent mid-level seats inside that book, four ran past twelve weeks on panel-conflicts rather than on shortlist quality.
HSR reports, lockstep announcements, and the ACC 2025 survey
Docket counts come from the Hart-Scott-Rodino annual reports. Lockstep cash comes from the June 2026 Milbank announcement and the firms that matched it. In-house cash comes from the ACC 2025 title tables. Public-sector cash comes from OPM and employer postings.
Sources
39 references- Sartori & Partners — New York Legal Talent Research Programme (1,675 structured interviews; ~67,000 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- FTC and DOJ Issue Fiscal Year 2025 Hart-Scott-Rodino Annual Report ftc.gov ↗
- Hart-Scott-Rodino Annual Report Fiscal Year 2025 ftc.gov ↗
- FTC and DOJ Issue Fiscal Year 2024 Hart-Scott-Rodino Annual Report ftc.gov ↗
- New HSR thresholds and filing fees for 2026 ftc.gov ↗
- Federal Trade Commission, Congressional Budget Justification Fiscal Year 2026 ftc.gov ↗
- Antitrust Division (ATR) FY 2027 Budget Request At A Glance justice.gov ↗
- Salary Table 2026-DCB opm.gov ↗
- ALERT: Milbank Does It Again - Associate Salaries Are Going Up!!! abovethelaw.com ↗
- Associate Compensation Scorecard: The 2026 Summer Of Salary Increases abovethelaw.com ↗
- Milbank Raises Associate Pay Scale, Topping Out At $455K law360.com ↗
- MEMORANDUM FOR ALL LAWYERS November 18, 2025 Year-End Bonuses & 2026 Base Salaries abovethelaw.com ↗
- Despite Expectations, $225,000 Entry Associate Salaries Lag at Large Law Firms nalp.org ↗
- Law Department Compensation Survey (2025 Executive Summary) acc.com ↗
- Honors Program Participating Components justice.gov ↗
- Attorney Hiring in the Bureau of Competition ftc.gov ↗
- Economic Justice Division Antitrust Bureau – New York City Assistant Attorneys General ag.ny.gov ↗
- Antitrust (DC) gibsondunn.com ↗
- Experienced Hires axinn.com ↗
- Antitrust Associate – Mergers careers.wsgr.com ↗
- FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson Announces FTC-DOJ's Joint 2023 Merger Guidelines Are in Effect ftc.gov ↗
- Fifth Circuit unpublished order, No. 26-40094 litigationtracker.law.georgetown.edu ↗
- M&A in U.S. Rose to $2.04 Trillion in 2025, Highest on Record news.bloomberglaw.com ↗
- M&A Market Pulse: 2025: A Banner Year for Dealmaking wellsfargomedia.com ↗
- KKR Agrees to Pay Record $250M Penalty for Serial Violations of Federal Premerger Review Law justice.gov ↗
- State Coalition Claims Victory in Live Nation Monopolization Trial wsgr.com ↗
- Department of Justice Wins Significant Remedies Against Google justice.gov ↗
- Total Criminal Cases Filed justice.gov ↗
- GCR 100 2026 - Kirkland & Ellis globalcompetitionreview.com ↗
- FTC Finalizes Changes to Premerger Notification Form ftc.gov ↗
- Premerger Notification; Reporting and Waiting Period Requirements federalregister.gov ↗
- Premerger Notification Program ftc.gov ↗
- Federal Trade Commission Files to Accede to Vacatur of Non-Compete Clause Rule ftc.gov ↗
- FTC and DOJ Jointly Issue Antitrust Guidelines on Business Practices that Impact Workers ftc.gov ↗
- FTC Launches Joint Labor Task Force to Protect American Workers ftc.gov ↗
- FTC Sues Southern Glazer's for Illegal Price Discrimination ftc.gov ↗
- FTC Dismisses Lawsuit Against PepsiCo ftc.gov ↗
- HSR rewind: The New HSR Rules are vacated and parties return to the old HSR form whitecase.com ↗
- Svetlana Gans Appointed Future ABA Antitrust Law Section Chair gibsondunn.com ↗
HSR counts measure reportable deals, not lawyer headcount. ACC medians are all-practice title cash; antitrust is ranked as a premium specialty without a printed dollar. Lockstep figures apply to matching firms.
Keep reading
Merger control is a calendar. The hire is a question of when.
When a company should staff merger-control in-house rather than buy the hours — the seat this pay table does not own.
Read the merger-control seatWhen deal volume falls, does the company still need the seat?
The countercyclical antitrust practice: investigations and monopolization work when the filing calendar thins.
Read the practice cycleIn-House Counsel Salary Guide 2026
All-practice in-house cash by seniority and metro — the wider title stack this antitrust table sits inside.
Read the in-house guideFor general counsel and heads of legal
Price the antitrust seat before you match lockstep.
If you are putting an antitrust lawyer on a company payroll — or deciding that the panel should keep the hours — we map the seat, the cash machine it actually sits on, and the shortlist. No name circulated until you say so.