COSAL Annual Dinner 2024

COSAL members gathered on the evening of October 29 at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington DC for cocktails, dinner, and celebratory speeches to honor COSAL’s 38th year.

COSAL President Kellie Lerner welcomed the guests and introduced our keynote speaker, Doha Mekki, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Doha delivered a magnificent speech that linked the antitrust laws to the civil rights and social justice movements in the U.S.  The deeply-researched speech reached back to America’s history of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement, making connections to the Sherman and Clayton Acts, and our modern day efforts towards economic justice.  She quoted Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Sen. Sherman, and Justice Thurgood Marshall, among others, to make those connections.  The speech was powerful and important. 

Our next speaker was Katie Gommel, Vice President of RebuttalPR, a communications firm that works exclusively with the plaintiff’s bar and is a new COSAL sponsor. Katie gave us an interesting and very useful talk about how we, as antitrust plaintiff lawyers, can promote our work to the public.   

Pamela was the final speaker of the evening, presenting the 2024 COSAL President’s Award to outgoing President Kellie Lerner, Managing Partner of the brand new Shinder Cantor Lerner law firm. Pam detailed the enormous contributions Kellie has made to COSAL and the Year in Review under Kellie’s leadership.