WASHINGTON D.C. (CelebrityAccess) — The U.S. Justice Department has recommended attorney Mark Filip to monitor Live Nation’s compliance to the terms of the decade-old agreement consent decree that allowed the entertainment giant to merge with Ticketmaster.
Filip, who briefly served as former Deputy Attorney General and Acting Attorney General under President Obama, also served as a judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois from 2004 to 2008.
He stepped away from public service in 2009 to join the prestigious law firm Kirkland & Ellis, where he currently leads their government enforcement defense and internal investigations group as a managing partner.
As well, Kirkland & Ellis has a history of operating in a regulatory role representing the federal government and has worked with monitors and independent consultants in various capacities, including multiple monitor situations involving the Department of Justice and other regulators and institutions, including at state and international levels.
A Kirkland & Ellis attorney is an interesting choice. The firm’s client list includes Irving Azoff and Tim Leiweke’s Oak View Group, which is currently developing arena projects in partnership with Live Nation in Austin, Texas, and Milan, Italy. While that business likely wouldn’t come under the purview of Kirkland & Ellis’s white-collar defense practice, it would still appear to align the firm’s financial interests with the company whose compliance they are overseeing.
However, the DOJ said it did not see the matter as a conflict of interest.
According to the DOJ, Filip has not participated in representing Oak View and that he and any other personnel involved in monitoring would be “walled off” from doing so during the period of monitoring.
