Megan Jones specializes in recovering damages for corporate victims of antitrust cartels. Recoveries from the cases she has been involved in total over half a billion dollars: In re Polyester Staple Antitrust Litigation (W.D.N.C) ($63.5 million on behalf of the class); In re Compact Disc Antitrust Litigation (C.D.Ca.) (over $50 million on behalf of class); In re Rubber Chemicals Antitrust Litigation (N.D. Ca.) (over $100 million on behalf of class); In re MMA Antitrust Litigation (E.D. Pa.) (over $20 million on behalf of class); In re EPDM Antitrust Litigation (D. Conn.) ($81 million on behalf of the class). Jones was also involved in the negotiation of a $300 million global settlement with Bayer (which resolved three cases: EPDM, Rubber Chemicals and NBR), and drafted the innovative settlement agreement itself.
In 2013, Global Competition Review named Jones as one of the 100 successful Women in Antitrust globally. She was one of just 23 U.S. Lawyers selected for this global honor and the only U.S. lawyer who exclusively focuses her practice on pursuing recovery for victims of cartels.
In 2012 and 2013, The Legal 500, which provides comprehensive worldwide coverage on legal services, selected Jones as one of the top 10 Leading Lawyers in the U.S. in plaintiffs’ representation for antitrust. In 2011, the publication recommended Jones for having a “good understanding of business and operational environments.”
In 2012, Jones was selected by Law360 as a “Rising Star” in the Competition category. Law360 selected just five attorneys in each category as top legal talent under 40 in the U.S. and internationally, whose accomplishments in major litigation or transactions belie their age. In the same year, she was also chosen by her peers as a Washington, DC Super Lawyer in Antitrust, reserved for those attorneys who have attained a high-degree of peer recognition and professional achievement.
In 2010, Jones was the only female antitrust attorney who had two of her cases featured in the National Law Journal’s Plaintiffs’ Hot List, which named the top twelve plaintiffs’ law firms in the U.S.
Despite the fact that her typical cases include millions of pages of evidence, several multinational parties, and a multitude of counsel, Jones is legendary for relentlessly focusing on the litigation endgame – to develop and find the facts necessary to win the case. For example, faced with over 1.5 million pages of documents produced by the opposing side, Jones organized her team to identify the 2300 key documents in the case in under four months’ time. Jones then used these 2300 key documents to depose over 20 witnesses, uphold a class certification decision at the Circuit level, defeat summary judgment at the district court and prepare for trial (which ultimately settled successfully on the courthouse steps). Marshaling scores of co-counsel, Jones whittled a mountain of evidence down to what was needed to win – and then did.
Based on her experience, Jones has been asked to speak on antitrust matters around the world. She was asked to speak in Sydney, Australia at the American Bar Association’s 2010 “Cross-Border Collaboration, Convergence and Conflict: The Internationalization of Domestic Law and Its Consequences” with other luminaries from the U.S. and Australian Bar, including Hon. Justice Antonin Scalia; Sir Anthony Mason AC KBE AC, Former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia; The Honorable Jeffrey Bleich, U.S. Ambassador to Australia; Graeme Samuel, AO, Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission; Tony D’Aloisio, Chairman of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission; and many others from the profession in Australia and the U.S. Jones also spoke at an event co-sponsored by the American Bar Association and German Bar Association in June 2011 in Munich, Germany (“Successfully Navigating Hazardous Waters: The Second Annual Conference on Transatlantic Deals and Disputes.”). Jones has also spoken at what is widely known as the “crown jewel” of antitrust conferences, at the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Masters Course.
Experienced with high dollar litigation and with a results-driven management style, it is little wonder that Jones was tapped to be Chairwoman of Hausfeld LLP’s New Case Committee at the firm, which is responsible for approving all new cases filed by the firm. Jones is skilled at evaluating potential cases, thoroughly vetting them for their strengths and weaknesses.
When electronic discovery came on the scene, Jones quickly adapted to the new paradigm of finding evidence. Jones is a member of The Sedona Conference®, which is composed of leading jurists, lawyers, experts, academics and others, at the cutting edge of issues in electronic discovery. She is the co-author of The Sedona Conference Glossary: E-Discovery and Digital Management (2nd Ed). (Dec. 2007) and Navigating the Vendor Proposal Process: Best Practices for the Selection of Electronic Discovery Vendors, and was recently selected to be on the drafting team of Discovery 2.0, the conference’s next work on how discovery should be conducted. Jones was also featured in a podcast about cost-shifting in electronic discovery with the Honorable James C. Francis, IV, Magistrate Judge from the Southern District of New York, and Robert W. Trenchard, the chair of Wilmer Hale’s E-Discovery Committee.
Jones also knows that in litigation, experience is the best teacher. Faced with organizations that were not addressing issues from the cartel victims’ perspective, she created an organization herself dedicated to antitrust practitioners exchanging best practices and information. She is the creator and founder of Women Antitrust Plaintiffs’ Attorneys (www.womenantitrustattorneys.com), a national organization for women who primarily practice cartel law on behalf of victims, attracting luminaries within the antitrust field to its annual conference. This conference has grown in popularity, and in 2009, representatives from over twenty law firms from across the U.S. attended. The growing impact of this organization is demonstrated by the caliber of speakers it is attracting: in addition to having four federal judges as speakers, the Keynote Address at the 2010 conference was given by Wendy H. Waszmer, Counsel to Assistant Attorney General Christine A. Varney from the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division.