New York Law Journal Recognizes Kellie Lerner as a Distinguished Leader

Robins Kaplan is pleased to announce that partner Kellie Lerner has been named to the New York Law Journal’s 2020 list of Distinguished Leaders. The award honors attorneys in leadership positions who achieved impressive and positive results over the past year while demonstrating clear leadership skills.

Lerner co-chairs the national Antitrust and Trade Regulation group at Robins Kaplan and serves as co-chair of the firm’s Diversity Committee. She is one of only 23 attorneys recognized as a 2020 Distinguished Leader.

Lerner has nearly two decades of experience litigating high-stakes antitrust disputes on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants in federal courts throughout the country. She currently serves as co-lead counsel in In re Hard Disk Drives Suspension Assemblies Antitrust Litigation and In re Merck Mumps Vaccine Antitrust Class Action. Lerner is also responsible for identifying and initiating new antitrust actions at the firm. In this capacity, she has initiated the first antitrust class action lawsuits in the country in dozens of actions that have ultimately resulted in billions of dollars in recoveries for victims of anticompetitive conduct. She has also counseled generic pharmaceutical, alternative energy, and entertainment companies on competition issues.

In addition to her antitrust practice, Lerner serves as co-chair of the firm’s Diversity Committee. In that role, she has led an influential movement within the firm to take issues of diversity and inclusion into account in every aspect of the firm’s operations. She spearheaded the firm’s LEAD (Leaders Engaged in the Advancement of Diversity) initiative, which holds firm leadership accountable for progress on diversity goals.

In recent years, Lerner was named a “New York Trailblazer” by New York Law Journal, named as one of the “Elite Women of the Plaintiff’s Bar” by The National Law Journal, and a “Diversity Leader” by Profiles in Diversity. She was also recognized as a notable practitioner in antitrust law by Chambers USA Guide, in which she was praised by her peers for her ability to "get large teams of people to work effectively together."

Lerner serves as Chair of Diversity for the Antitrust Section of the New York State Bar Association, Co-Chair of the National Association of Women Lawyers’ Litigation Affinity Group, and is a member of the Editorial Board of the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Magazine. She is regularly called upon to write and lecture on issues of antitrust law and is involved in a number of community organizations, including co-founding Roseann’s Gift, named for her late mother and dedicated to raising research funding to cure lung cancer.