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What’s competition law?

Competition law is a field of law that protects the level of competition within markets, by preventing or countering a company's abuse of a dominant position within the market. The purpose of this field of law is to nurture the economy by giving consumers more choices and encouraging innovation, improvement and progress in the commercial world.

In the UK, competition law is regulated by the Competition Act 1998 and the Enterprise Act 2002. A department called the Competition & Markets Authority is responsible for promoting competition and inspecting anti-competitive behaviour.

Read this Practice Area Profile to find out more about competition law.

What do competition lawyers do?

Competition lawyers complete a wide range of tasks, including:

• advising on international trade;
• advising a claimant or defendant in the Competition Appeal Tribunal;
• drafting memos for clients regarding competition law and consumer law issues in their company;
• reviewing and drafting contracts and sometimes identifying key contractual risks;
• advising on a client's advertising campaign;
• conducting investigations into the way a client conducts business, to ensure it’s in accordance with the legal framework for competition law;
• advising on the competition law implications of transactions; and
• advising on commercial or co-operation agreements.

Key skills for a competition lawyer

A key and unique skill for competition law is an interest in economic and politics – an understanding of the markets is tantamount, since your work revolves around them. The usual lawyer skills – analysis, curiosity, drafting, negotiation, communication and collaboration, and argumentation – are also essential. Finally, as always, a strong grasp of commercial awareness will also stand you in good stead.

Recent developments

There have been important changes within UK competition law recently. Namely, while the UK used to follow EU competition case law, this is no longer the case due to Brexit.

Another significant discussion in the remit of competition law is that of tech monopolies – such as Google and Amazon – and their ability to restrict competition, as well as the potential tightening of regulations on them to ensure this doesn't happen. If you're interested in developments in this area, a good and contemporary starting point would probably be the investigation into Ticketmaster launched in September of this year over the Oasis ticket sale fiasco.

With the commercial world shifting constantly, it seems the landscape of competition law will follow suit. If this area of law is something that interests you, it's best to start monitoring the commercial and legal landscape to get a sense of potential future changes – and how they might impact the work you want to do.