When she graduated from Columbia Law School in 1979, Molly Boast won the Jane Marks Murphy Prize, awarded for “professional promise in public interest law.” Boast recalls, however, that as a student in the Big Apple Clinic, working in New York City’s Law Department, spirited courtroom litigation is what appealed to her most.
“I discovered what I felt to be my natural skill set,” says Boast, who today is one of the nation’s top litigators in the field of antitrust law.
A member of Debevoise & Plimpton’s Litigation Department, her current practice ranges across all areas of litigation and counseling, including civil and criminal investigations, private litigation, and domestic and international mergers and acquisitions.
Boast’s success in private practice doesn’t mean that she has in any way jettisoned a commitment to public service. In mid-May, she will join the U.S. Justice Department to serve as a deputy assistant attorney general for civil matters in the Antitrust Division.
It is the second time she has brought her knowledge of competition law to Washington, D.C. From 1999 to 2001, she was senior deputy director and director of the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission. In that post, she had principal responsibility for the commission’s successful litigation challenges to the BP/ARCO and Heinz/Beech Nut mergers. She also oversaw significant litigation challenges to patent settlement agreements in the pharmaceutical industry.
Her affinity for litigation, Boast says, is driven by her penchant for the “adversarial process” as a way to determine facts. She also enjoys the broad spectrum of cases drawn to antitrust law.
“Being an antitrust litigator allows me to work across a wide array of interesting fields,” she says.
Boast, who joined Debevoise & Plimpton in 2002, counts among her clients corporations in the financial, pharmaceutical, media, and beverage industries. She also speaks and writes frequently on antitrust law, and her articles have appeared in the National Law Journal, Competition Law 360, and Dow Jones Corporate Governance.
Boast, who received a B.A. from William & Mary and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University, had entertained a career in law since her teenage years. The rigorous intellectual training and the professors she most admires—Harriet S. Rabb, who had a “great teaching touch,” and Harvey Goldschmid, with his “humane” yet rigorous use of the Socratic Method—have led Boast to loyally support the Law School since graduation, but especially this year when she celebrates her 30th reunion.
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When she graduated from Columbia Law School in 1979, Molly Boast won the Jane Marks Murphy Prize, awarded for “professional promise in public interest law.” Boast recalls, however, that as a student in the Big Apple Clinic, working in New York City’s Law Department, spirited courtroom litigation is what appealed to her most.