Antitrust / Competition Cold-Start Interview

Purpose

Conduct a structured, staged interview with an antitrust / competition practice group — led by a supervising attorney or authorized designee — to gather the information required to populate practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md. The skill walks through all eight profile fields in sequence, records every answer, and assembles a filled draft of the profile for the practice group's review and approval. It produces draft legal work product for attorney review — not legal advice and not a final configuration.

Use When

• A team is adopting AgentCounsel and needs to configure practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md for the first time.
• An antitrust / competition practice group is being onboarded to the library and no current profile exists.
• The library is being stood up for the first time and the antitrust / competition area is included in scope.
• A practice group wishes to revisit or rebuild its profile from scratch rather than make incremental updates.

Required Inputs

• A knowledgeable person from the antitrust / competition practice group — a supervising attorney or an authorized designee — who can answer questions about the group's jurisdiction, positions, escalation rules, and review requirements.
• Any existing playbooks, templates, source-of-truth documents, or standard-form documents the group already uses, so they can be referenced or cited in the profile.

Do Not Use When

• The group is actively working a live antitrust / competition matter. This skill configures the library; it does not support an open matter.
• A practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md already exists and is current. In that case this is a refresh, not a cold start — though the skill may still be used to rebuild the profile deliberately.
• No authorized person is available to answer. Do not complete the interview with guessed or inferred answers; record all gaps as [CONFIRM: ...] placeholders.
• The purpose is to handle a specific antitrust / competition matter (use the appropriate matter-level skill for that task).

Legal Safety Rules

• Produce draft legal work product for attorney review. This is not legal advice.
• Never guess or infer an answer to any interview question. If the interviewee cannot answer a question, record [CONFIRM: answer required from practice group] and move on.
• The filled profile is a draft. It must be reviewed and explicitly approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it governs any AgentCounsel work product.
• Do not invent standard positions, clause preferences, escalation thresholds, or review rules. Record only what the interviewee provides.
• Do not include client-specific facts, client names, matter identifiers, or privileged details in the profile. The profile is a reusable group-level configuration, not a matter record.
• Do not state or imply that any threshold, position, or rule in the profile satisfies a legal requirement under any jurisdiction. Jurisdiction-specific legal obligations are for the attorney to verify.
• Flag every item the interviewee defers or leaves open with a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder so the reviewer can see exactly what is unresolved.

Workflow

Stage 1 — Jurisdictions

Ask the interviewee:

• In which competition regimes does the group regularly practice — US (DOJ, FTC, state AGs), EU, UK CMA, China SAMR, Brazil CADE, India CCI, others?
• Does the group regularly handle multi-jurisdictional merger-clearance filings, and how is that allocation across jurisdictions tracked?
• Are there sectors — financial services, agriculture, communications, healthcare, technology platforms — the group regularly engages with that have specialized competition frameworks?
• Are there jurisdictions the group treats as out of scope, requiring specialist outside counsel?
• Does the group maintain jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction reference materials on merger thresholds, dominance frameworks, and enforcement priorities?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: jurisdiction not yet specified].

Stage 2 — Client and Team Context

Ask the interviewee:

• Does the group represent primarily corporate clients (counseling), M&A clients (clearance), investigation targets (defense), private-litigation parties, or a mix?
• What types of competition matters does the group handle most frequently — clearance, compliance counseling, investigation defense, private litigation, leniency / immunity work?
• How is the team structured — competition partners, associates, economists embedded or external, support staff?
• How does the group coordinate with foreign competition counsel, economic experts, and sector specialists?
• Are there client categories — platform companies, holders of dominant positions, market participants under structural orders — that require special handling?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: client/team context not yet specified].

Stage 3 — Escalation Thresholds

Ask the interviewee:

• Which matters automatically require escalation — investigation initiation, dawn-raid response, cartel suspicion, market-power / dominance analysis, multi-jurisdictional filing, gun-jumping concern?
• Are there transaction-size thresholds (filing requirement triggers) that automatically require partner-level review?
• When does an algorithm-related concern, a trade-association concern, or an information-exchange concern require immediate specialist involvement?
• Which engagement types — leniency application, voluntary disclosure, consent-decree negotiation — require partner-level review regardless of size?
• Who is the designated escalation contact for competition matters, and what is the expected turnaround?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: escalation threshold not yet specified].

Stage 4 — Preferred Output Style

Ask the interviewee:

• Should competition work product default to memo format, issue-spotting matrix format, clearance-strategy format, or compliance-checklist format?
• What level of detail does the practice group expect — executive summary, full economic-analysis-supported memo, both layered?
• Are there house style rules for risk ratings, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction breakdowns, or open-items lists in competition work product?
• Does the group produce clearance-strategy decks or compliance-training materials in standard formats?
• Are there particular deliverable types — clean-team agreements, gun-jumping protocols, leniency applications — for which the group has mandatory format requirements?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: output style preference not yet specified].

Stage 5 — Source-of-Truth Documents

Ask the interviewee:

• What is the group's authoritative clearance playbook, and where is it stored?
• Is there a clean-team agreement template, and how is it kept current?
• What document governs the group's trade-association attendance protocol?
• Are there compliance-training materials or policy-template libraries the group treats as authoritative?
• Does the group maintain a dawn-raid protocol with counsel contacts, evidence-preservation rules, and employee guidance?

Record answers and document names. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: source document not yet identified].

Stage 6 — Standard Positions and Playbooks

Ask the interviewee:

• What is the group's default clearance-strategy posture — pre-filing engagement, formal filing strategy, second-request preparedness?
• What is the group's default leniency / immunity framework — when warranted, how scoped?
• What is the group's default clean-team membership and information-segregation posture for diligence?
• What is the group's default position on algorithm and AI-pricing matters?
• What is the group's default trade-association attendance protocol and information-sharing framework?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: standard position not yet specified].

Stage 7 — Attorney Review Requirements

Ask the interviewee:

• At what stage does attorney review of competition work product become mandatory — clearance-strategy stage, filing stage, response-to-second-request stage, settlement / consent-decree stage?
• Are there work-product types for which attorney review is always required regardless of size — any HSR filing, any clearance opinion, any clean-team setup, any leniency application, any agency response?
• What is the designated reviewer's role — handling attorney, supervising competition partner, multi-jurisdictional lead?
• What is the expected turnaround for clearance-filing review, and how are urgent reviews (second-request responses, dawn-raid response, agency deadlines) handled?
• Is there a formal sign-off step before any agency filing, leniency application, or consent-decree negotiation?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: review requirement not yet specified].

Stage 8 — Prohibited Assumptions

Ask the interviewee:

• Are there facts agents must never assume without explicit confirmation — that conduct is not a cartel, that an agreement is rule-of-reason, that a market definition is settled, that a clearance is granted, that a safe harbor applies?
• Are there competition-specific risks — cartel involvement, dawn-raid posture, second-request response — where an agent must stop and escalate rather than reason through independently?
• Are there matter types where agents must never proceed beyond intake without direct attorney involvement — investigation defense, leniency applications, dawn-raid response, criminal antitrust referrals?
• Are there prior incidents — adverse decisions, structural remedies, leniency declinations — that should be encoded as explicit prohibitions for agents working on competition matters?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: prohibited assumption not yet specified].

Stage 9 — Assemble the Draft Profile

Compile all answers into a filled draft of practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md, populating each of the eight profile sections. For every item that was not answered, insert a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder with enough context for the reviewer to understand what needs to be supplied. Append a list of all open placeholders so the reviewing attorney can see at a glance what remains unresolved.

Output Format

Deliver:

1. Filled draft of practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md — all eight sections populated with answers from the interview. Every unanswered item is a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder.
2. Open-items list — an explicit enumeration of every placeholder inserted, with the stage and question it corresponds to, so the reviewing attorney can resolve them efficiently.

Label the entire output: Draft legal work product for attorney review. Not legal advice. This profile draft must be reviewed and approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it is relied upon.

Attorney Verification Checklist

• [ ] All eight profile sections have been reviewed by a supervising attorney or authorized practice-group representative.
• [ ] Jurisdiction coverage — including DOJ, FTC, EU, UK, China SAMR, and other regimes — is accurately recorded.
• [ ] Filing-threshold framework and clearance-strategy defaults reflect current law [Verify current law].
• [ ] Clean-team agreement template and gun-jumping protocol references are current.
• [ ] Dawn-raid protocol references are current and counsel-contact list is up to date.
• [ ] Filing deadlines and waiting-period clocks are marked [deadline verification required] in any related deliverable.
• [ ] No client-specific facts, matter identifiers, or privileged details appear in the profile.
• [ ] All [CONFIRM: ...] placeholders have been resolved or explicitly accepted as pending.
• [ ] The approved profile has been saved to practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md and its effective date recorded.
• [ ] A process for periodic profile review and update has been identified.

Full raw SKILL.md

---
name: Antitrust / Competition Cold-Start Interview
description: "Use when an antitrust / competition practice group is adopting AgentCounsel and needs to configure its practice profile by answering a structured interview covering jurisdictions, client context, escalation thresholds, output preferences, source documents, standard positions, review requirements, and prohibited assumptions."
practice_area: setup
task_type: interview
jurisdictions: []
risk_level: low
requires_attorney_review: true
inputs:
  - "Access to an antitrust / competition attorney or authorized designee"
  - "The practice group's jurisdictions and client context"
  - "Standard positions, escalation thresholds, and review requirements"
outputs:
  - "Filled antitrust / competition practice profile draft for attorney review"
related_skills:
  - skills/antitrust-competition/antitrust-risk-intake/SKILL.md
  - skills/antitrust-competition/merger-antitrust-issue-spotter/SKILL.md
  - skills/antitrust-competition/antitrust-compliance-policy-review/SKILL.md
tags:
  - setup
  - cold-start
  - practice-profile
  - configuration
  - antitrust-competition
---

# Antitrust / Competition Cold-Start Interview

## Purpose

Conduct a structured, staged interview with an antitrust / competition practice group — led by a supervising attorney or authorized designee — to gather the information required to populate `practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md`. The skill walks through all eight profile fields in sequence, records every answer, and assembles a filled draft of the profile for the practice group's review and approval. It produces draft legal work product for attorney review — not legal advice and not a final configuration.

## Use When

- A team is adopting AgentCounsel and needs to configure `practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md` for the first time.
- An antitrust / competition practice group is being onboarded to the library and no current profile exists.
- The library is being stood up for the first time and the antitrust / competition area is included in scope.
- A practice group wishes to revisit or rebuild its profile from scratch rather than make incremental updates.

## Required Inputs

- A knowledgeable person from the antitrust / competition practice group — a supervising attorney or an authorized designee — who can answer questions about the group's jurisdiction, positions, escalation rules, and review requirements.
- Any existing playbooks, templates, source-of-truth documents, or standard-form documents the group already uses, so they can be referenced or cited in the profile.

## Do Not Use When

- The group is actively working a live antitrust / competition matter. This skill configures the library; it does not support an open matter.
- A `practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md` already exists and is current. In that case this is a refresh, not a cold start — though the skill may still be used to rebuild the profile deliberately.
- No authorized person is available to answer. Do not complete the interview with guessed or inferred answers; record all gaps as `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholders.
- The purpose is to handle a specific antitrust / competition matter (use the appropriate matter-level skill for that task).

## Legal Safety Rules

- Produce draft legal work product for attorney review. This is not legal advice.
- Never guess or infer an answer to any interview question. If the interviewee cannot answer a question, record `[CONFIRM: answer required from practice group]` and move on.
- The filled profile is a draft. It must be reviewed and explicitly approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it governs any AgentCounsel work product.
- Do not invent standard positions, clause preferences, escalation thresholds, or review rules. Record only what the interviewee provides.
- Do not include client-specific facts, client names, matter identifiers, or privileged details in the profile. The profile is a reusable group-level configuration, not a matter record.
- Do not state or imply that any threshold, position, or rule in the profile satisfies a legal requirement under any jurisdiction. Jurisdiction-specific legal obligations are for the attorney to verify.
- Flag every item the interviewee defers or leaves open with a visible `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholder so the reviewer can see exactly what is unresolved.

## Workflow

**Stage 1 — Jurisdictions**

Ask the interviewee:
- In which competition regimes does the group regularly practice — US (DOJ, FTC, state AGs), EU, UK CMA, China SAMR, Brazil CADE, India CCI, others?
- Does the group regularly handle multi-jurisdictional merger-clearance filings, and how is that allocation across jurisdictions tracked?
- Are there sectors — financial services, agriculture, communications, healthcare, technology platforms — the group regularly engages with that have specialized competition frameworks?
- Are there jurisdictions the group treats as out of scope, requiring specialist outside counsel?
- Does the group maintain jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction reference materials on merger thresholds, dominance frameworks, and enforcement priorities?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: jurisdiction not yet specified]`.

**Stage 2 — Client and Team Context**

Ask the interviewee:
- Does the group represent primarily corporate clients (counseling), M&A clients (clearance), investigation targets (defense), private-litigation parties, or a mix?
- What types of competition matters does the group handle most frequently — clearance, compliance counseling, investigation defense, private litigation, leniency / immunity work?
- How is the team structured — competition partners, associates, economists embedded or external, support staff?
- How does the group coordinate with foreign competition counsel, economic experts, and sector specialists?
- Are there client categories — platform companies, holders of dominant positions, market participants under structural orders — that require special handling?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: client/team context not yet specified]`.

**Stage 3 — Escalation Thresholds**

Ask the interviewee:
- Which matters automatically require escalation — investigation initiation, dawn-raid response, cartel suspicion, market-power / dominance analysis, multi-jurisdictional filing, gun-jumping concern?
- Are there transaction-size thresholds (filing requirement triggers) that automatically require partner-level review?
- When does an algorithm-related concern, a trade-association concern, or an information-exchange concern require immediate specialist involvement?
- Which engagement types — leniency application, voluntary disclosure, consent-decree negotiation — require partner-level review regardless of size?
- Who is the designated escalation contact for competition matters, and what is the expected turnaround?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: escalation threshold not yet specified]`.

**Stage 4 — Preferred Output Style**

Ask the interviewee:
- Should competition work product default to memo format, issue-spotting matrix format, clearance-strategy format, or compliance-checklist format?
- What level of detail does the practice group expect — executive summary, full economic-analysis-supported memo, both layered?
- Are there house style rules for risk ratings, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction breakdowns, or open-items lists in competition work product?
- Does the group produce clearance-strategy decks or compliance-training materials in standard formats?
- Are there particular deliverable types — clean-team agreements, gun-jumping protocols, leniency applications — for which the group has mandatory format requirements?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: output style preference not yet specified]`.

**Stage 5 — Source-of-Truth Documents**

Ask the interviewee:
- What is the group's authoritative clearance playbook, and where is it stored?
- Is there a clean-team agreement template, and how is it kept current?
- What document governs the group's trade-association attendance protocol?
- Are there compliance-training materials or policy-template libraries the group treats as authoritative?
- Does the group maintain a dawn-raid protocol with counsel contacts, evidence-preservation rules, and employee guidance?

Record answers and document names. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: source document not yet identified]`.

**Stage 6 — Standard Positions and Playbooks**

Ask the interviewee:
- What is the group's default clearance-strategy posture — pre-filing engagement, formal filing strategy, second-request preparedness?
- What is the group's default leniency / immunity framework — when warranted, how scoped?
- What is the group's default clean-team membership and information-segregation posture for diligence?
- What is the group's default position on algorithm and AI-pricing matters?
- What is the group's default trade-association attendance protocol and information-sharing framework?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: standard position not yet specified]`.

**Stage 7 — Attorney Review Requirements**

Ask the interviewee:
- At what stage does attorney review of competition work product become mandatory — clearance-strategy stage, filing stage, response-to-second-request stage, settlement / consent-decree stage?
- Are there work-product types for which attorney review is always required regardless of size — any HSR filing, any clearance opinion, any clean-team setup, any leniency application, any agency response?
- What is the designated reviewer's role — handling attorney, supervising competition partner, multi-jurisdictional lead?
- What is the expected turnaround for clearance-filing review, and how are urgent reviews (second-request responses, dawn-raid response, agency deadlines) handled?
- Is there a formal sign-off step before any agency filing, leniency application, or consent-decree negotiation?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: review requirement not yet specified]`.

**Stage 8 — Prohibited Assumptions**

Ask the interviewee:
- Are there facts agents must never assume without explicit confirmation — that conduct is not a cartel, that an agreement is rule-of-reason, that a market definition is settled, that a clearance is granted, that a safe harbor applies?
- Are there competition-specific risks — cartel involvement, dawn-raid posture, second-request response — where an agent must stop and escalate rather than reason through independently?
- Are there matter types where agents must never proceed beyond intake without direct attorney involvement — investigation defense, leniency applications, dawn-raid response, criminal antitrust referrals?
- Are there prior incidents — adverse decisions, structural remedies, leniency declinations — that should be encoded as explicit prohibitions for agents working on competition matters?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: prohibited assumption not yet specified]`.

**Stage 9 — Assemble the Draft Profile**

Compile all answers into a filled draft of `practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md`, populating each of the eight profile sections. For every item that was not answered, insert a visible `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholder with enough context for the reviewer to understand what needs to be supplied. Append a list of all open placeholders so the reviewing attorney can see at a glance what remains unresolved.

## Output Format

Deliver:

1. **Filled draft of `practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md`** — all eight sections populated with answers from the interview. Every unanswered item is a visible `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholder.
2. **Open-items list** — an explicit enumeration of every placeholder inserted, with the stage and question it corresponds to, so the reviewing attorney can resolve them efficiently.

Label the entire output: **Draft legal work product for attorney review. Not legal advice. This profile draft must be reviewed and approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it is relied upon.**

## Attorney Verification Checklist

- [ ] All eight profile sections have been reviewed by a supervising attorney or authorized practice-group representative.
- [ ] Jurisdiction coverage — including DOJ, FTC, EU, UK, China SAMR, and other regimes — is accurately recorded.
- [ ] Filing-threshold framework and clearance-strategy defaults reflect current law `[Verify current law]`.
- [ ] Clean-team agreement template and gun-jumping protocol references are current.
- [ ] Dawn-raid protocol references are current and counsel-contact list is up to date.
- [ ] Filing deadlines and waiting-period clocks are marked `[deadline verification required]` in any related deliverable.
- [ ] No client-specific facts, matter identifiers, or privileged details appear in the profile.
- [ ] All `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholders have been resolved or explicitly accepted as pending.
- [ ] The approved profile has been saved to `practice-profiles/antitrust-competition.md` and its effective date recorded.
- [ ] A process for periodic profile review and update has been identified.