William Kolasky Biography

William Kolasky

William Kolasky is a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP and co-chairs the firm's Antitrust and Competition Practice Group.

Mr. Kolasky initially joined the firm in 1975 and became a partner in 1979. He left the firm in September 2001 to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was in charge of international antitrust and policy enforcement for the Antitrust Division. He led the Division's efforts to encourage greater convergence among competition authorities worldwide and to promote the application of sound economic principles to merger reviews. Mr. Kolasky is credited with being one of the architects of the new International Competition Network, an informal network of more than 75 competition authorities worldwide, and he served as the chair of the ICN's Merger Working Group.

Mr. Kolasky's practice covers the full range of antitrust matters, including merger clearance, cartel defense, and private litigation. He has secured clearance for more than a hundred mergers, including a number that were reviewed in parallel by the US and EU competition authorities. He was the lead WCP lawyer on, for example, the mergers of Price Waterhouse with Coopers & Lybrand and of AlliedSignal with Honeywell. He is currently representing a Norwegian chemical parcel tanker carrier in parallel cartel investigations in the United States and a number of other jurisdictions and in follow-on private class action litigation.

Mr. Kolasky is a graduate of Dartmouth College (A.B. 1968, magna cum laude) and Harvard Law School (J.D. 1971, magna cum laude), where he was Note Editor for the Harvard Law Review. Following graduation from law school, he clerked for Chief Judge Bailey Aldrich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Mr. Kolasky served as Assistant to the General Counsel of the Department of the Army from 1972 to 1975. He is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Mr. Kolasky has taught antitrust law at the American University's Washington College of Law and speaks regularly on antitrust topics. He also is the author of numerous articles on antitrust law.