White & Case hires former DOJ antitrust chief Slater

By Sara Merken

Sept 29 (Reuters) - Law firm White & Case said on Tuesday that Gail Slater, the former head of the US Justice Department’s antitrust division under President Donald Trump, will join as a partner based in Washington, D.C.

Slater, a veteran antitrust attorney, stepped down from the Justice Department role in February amid a battle within the administration over policing anti-competitive conduct. She held the position for less than a year.

Slater was not immediately made available for comment. In a statement provided by the firm, she called New York-founded White & Case “a great match for my practice.” She will join the firm's global antitrust practice and global technology industry group.

She was an economic advisor to US Vice President JD Vance during his time in the Senate and served on the White House’s National Economic Council during Trump's first term. Slater also worked for a decade as an antitrust lawyer at the Federal Trade Commission, where she brought cases to block mergers including Whole Foods' acquisition of organic grocer Wild Oats, and did stints as an executive at Fox Corp and Roku.

While Slater was at the helm of the antitrust division, the DOJ launched probes into egg producers and the meatpacking industry last year, and required US power company Constellation Energy to divest three power plants in order to complete its $16.4 billion acquisition of Calpine Corporation. Her division continued the US crackdown on Big Tech companies that started during Trump's first term, with major cases against Alphabet's Google and Apple.

Reuters and other outlets reported in July 2025 that two of Slater's deputies were fired for insubordination after Slater pushed back on orders to settle a case that would have blocked Hewlett Packard Enterprise's $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks. The move exposed a power struggle within the Trump administration between proponents of robust antitrust enforcement and dealmakers seeking to leverage influence.

Slater joined the conservative think tank American Compass as competition and technology policy chair in March.

Several large law firms over the past month have hired former top government officials to build out antitrust practices.