Announcement: Alex Barnett Presented with COSAL President’s Award

On November 1, 2023, Pamela Gilbert presented the 2023 COSAL President’s Award to COSAL’s outgoing President, Alex Barnett.  

Pamela Gilbert’s Remarks

I have very much enjoyed working with Alex as President and as an officer.  You might not know that Alex was, for a time, a stand-up comedian.  And while he doesn’t exactly wear that on his sleeve, I have enjoyed his dry sense of humor and the humorous way he looks at life.

Perhaps in keeping with this kind of public-facing background, the hallmark of Alex’s tenure as President was to try to raise the public profile of COSAL.  With his encouragement, we retained a firm to give us a blueprint for how we can become more visible as an organization and get our message out better.  The first step in that effort is a redesign of our website, to make it more functional and better for communicating with the public.  The new site is almost ready to unveil.

I also want to mention COSAL’s growing engagement on the issue of diversity, equity and inclusion in the plaintiff’s antitrust bar.  Some years ago, COSAL’s officers decided to make this a priority.  We began by creating a DEI Committee, which initiated an annual COSAL Diversity Leadership Summit.  The second annual summit occurred just last month.

Under Alex’s leadership, this year we expanded our DEI efforts in two key ways, under the theory that the antitrust bar will become more inclusive by engaging more young lawyers in our practice. 

First, we created the Jonathan W. Cuneo COSAL/Justice Catalyst Fellowship. The goal of the Fellowship is to enable new lawyers to pursue antitrust litigation as a crucial tool for accountability within the U.S. legal system, with a particular focus on facilitating the advancement of underrepresented individuals within the field, emphasizing inclusivity, fairness, and equal opportunity in the antitrust field.  Eleven COSAL firms are participating in this inaugural year, and from what I’ve heard, dozens of young lawyers have applied. 

Second, COSAL held our first-ever event at a law school. We held the event at Harvard Law School and it was a smashing success.  We plan to make law student outreach an annual COSAL event, and we’re already planning for next year.

I’ve recounted the other highlights of the year under Alex’s leadership in the attached document.  In brief, five new law firms joined, we held a record 10 events and one political fundraiser, the Amicus Committee filed seven briefs, and we held a meeting with staff from the Federal Trade Commission. 

Through it all, Alex has been there with energy, ideas and vision. Whenever we embark on a project, Alex wants to go a little bigger, a little bolder. It has kept me on my toes and produced great results.

I’ve enjoyed working with Alex, and it was an honor to present him with the 2023 COSAL President’s Award.