Justina (Tina) K. Sessions

SAN FRANCISCO - Justina K. Sessions regularly represents major corporations in large, complex antitrust and patent litigation. What she particularly enjoys about those cases is the opportunity to take "an incredibly complicated mess of thoughts and history and something technical" and then figure out how to defend her client "in a way that a generalist judge or jury can actually understand," she said.

"And that's where the magic of lawyering happens," she said. When her clients are in trial accused of anticompetitive behavior or of infringing patents, her approach often is to "tell the story of my clients' success," she said. The goal is to show that her clients' own ingenuity and work produced their success, not any sort of wrongdoing.

Sessions was part of the team that defended Qualcomm in a significant antitrust case brought by the FTC. One of the witnesses she put on was the company's head of research and development, whose testimony made clear all the investment and creativity that went into developing technology that has become fundamental to how cellphones operate.

When she can, Sessions likes to use photos, videos and other types of evidence to show how her client achieved success. Accessing information through multiple senses "is a really important way of presenting complex technological or economic concepts to a judge or jury," she said.

For Qualcomm, she used photos to demonstrate the elaborate testing the company puts its chip technology through. The court ruled against her client at trial. But the 9th Circuit reversed in what is considered a very significant antitrust ruling, and Sessions was a key part of the appellate team. FTC v. Qualcomm Inc., 969 F.3d 974 (9th Cir., Aug. 11, 2020).

In another major case, Sessions co-leads Google's defense in a series of antitrust class and individual actions attacking the search giant's digital advertising technology. In re Google Digital Advertising Antitrust Litigation 1:21-md-3010 (S.D. N.Y., filed April 30, 2021).

She is trying to keep another client, Honda Motor Co., out of multidistrict litigation encompassing individual and class actions accusing auto parts makers of widespread price-fixing and bidrigging. In re Automotive Parts Antitrust Litigation, 2:12-md-02311 (E.D. Mich., filed Feb. 7, 2012).

Honda is not a party in the ordinary sense in the litigation, but like other carmakers, it is considered a victim. It has reached its own settlements with some defendants, and so it does not want to be dragged into the MDL and be required to produce extensive discovery to benefit other types of purchasers. Achieving that while also protecting Honda's interests "has required a fair amount of deft lawyering," Sessions said.

Sessions said one reason she excels at explaining difficult technical and economic concepts is that she does not have training in either field. Instead, she must develop an understanding of an issue as a layperson herself in order to explain it to lay judges and jurors.

Her own college major was religious studies. "If anybody wants to talk about the influence that Christian & Jewish thought had on one another in the 11th & 12th centuries, I'd be more than delighted to have that discussion," she said. "But it doesn't come up in my cases very often."