# Antitrust / Competition Cold-Start Interview > 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. - Skill: `zgbrenner/antitrust-competition-cold-start-interview` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add zgbrenner/antitrust-competition-cold-start-interview` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/zgbrenner/antitrust-competition-cold-start-interview/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: zgbrenner (https://skillmd.com/u/zgbrenner) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/zgbrenner/antitrust-competition-cold-start-interview --- # 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.