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Microsoft Lawyer To Lead ABA's Antitrust Section
Dan writes "Wired is reporting that a top lawyer from Microsoft will take over later this year as chairman of the American Bar Association's antitrust section. The panel is organizing opposition to a congressional plan that would require more aggressive oversight by the courts of such antitrust settlements. Considering the next major ruling in MS's case is due soon, you can figure out how important this is to MS."
People are not reading the article. The group the lawyer is in charge of is a lobbying group, not one that will be making any of the decisions.
Try reading the whole AP article on which it's based.
The chair of an ABA section isn't all that powerful -- that is, she can't decide ABA "policy" on anything. ABA policies and recommendations are committee-driven things, and the Antitrust section is especially highly organized; there are many subcommittees based on subject, and each subcommittee has a chair (or two). Becoming the chair of an ABA section is really 1) a prestige thing, meaning that the chair is widely respected as a top-flight attorney or legal mind in the area the section covers, and 2) an organizational thing.
The ABA sections have varying levels of influence in legislation; arguably, the antitrust section is quite influential. But there are many reasons that Microsoft will really have no sway, either at the ABA level or the legislation level.
In any case, a conflict of interest MIGHT occur if the ABA were supposed to decide something important or instrumental to the Microsoft antitrust cases. But the ABA most certainly isn't, because that's not the ABA's job.
This appointment doesn't have any real significance. The ABA is not a government agency; it's a private lawyer's organization that is voluntary (lots and lots of lawyers don't belong).
The ABA has a lot of different subgroups, on anti-trust, patent law, corporate law, etc. They do training on their areas of specialty, have meetings to talk about their area of interest, and do sometimes lobby about pending legislation.
The ABA Antitrust section has been pro-business, anti-enforcement forever, so this is really no big deal.