In recognition of her impactful career of service to the legal profession, Wilkinson Stekloff Founding Partner Beth Wilkinson has been inducted into Lawdragon’s Hall of Fame. Revered by clients, colleagues, and competitors alike, Hall of Fame inductees are leaders at their firms whose contributions have shaped the law and legal profession in significant ways.
Beth has served as lead counsel in over 50 jury trials, including numerous bet-the-company, multibillion-dollar cases, earning an unrivaled record of victories in federal and state courts throughout the country. In the last three years, she has brought a fresh and pragmatic approach to high-stakes antitrust matters brought by the government.
Most recently, Beth was lead trial counsel for Microsoft in the FTC’s challenge to Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision — the second-largest merger in American history and the biggest involving a technology company. She defeated the FTC’s request for a preliminary injunction to stop the transaction after a five-day trial that began less than two weeks after the FTC filed its federal court complaint. Beth directed all aspects of litigation strategy from the time the acquisition was announced in January 2022, positioning the case for a federal court victory on an unprecedented timetable, shortly after which the deal closed. The American Lawyer named Beth “Litigator of the Week” and described the firm as “the legal equivalent of an elite special ops unit” for leading the successful defense.
Prior to that, Beth served as lead trial counsel for Altria Group, Inc. in an administrative trial related to the FTC’s antitrust challenge to Altria’s $12.8 billion minority investment in JUUL Labs. A February 2022 ruling by Chief Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell dismissed the FTC’s case in its entirety, and on June 30, 2023, the FTC dismissed its complaint against Altria rather than continuing litigation in front of the Commission itself.
In these cases, Beth’s approach centered on developing winning trial themes and focusing on a simple but straightforward factual narrative, rather than getting bogged down in technical economic jargon. Beth’s groundbreaking wins rewrote the traditional playbook on how businesses respond to FTC enforcement actions.