Joel S. Sanders is a partner in the San Francisco office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He has extensive experience in antitrust and other complex business litigation. He handles matters involving claims under federal and state antitrust laws as well as unfair competition and business practice laws. His work includes class action litigation, commercial litigation, antitrust counseling and government proceedings. Mr. Sanders' trial work has included civil and criminal antitrust and class action cases. He has handled cases in a wide variety of industries, including telecommunications, high technology, retail, defense, chemical, professional services, agriculture, and manufacturing.
Mr. Sanders received his law degree in 1982 from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall School of Law), where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and the California Law Review. After clerking for the Honorable Procter R. Hug Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Mr. Sanders was a trial attorney in the San Francisco office of the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. At the Justice Department, Mr. Sanders focused on civil merger litigation and criminal antitrust matters. Mr. Sanders came to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in 1987.
Mr. Sanders is a member of the Antitrust Sections of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of California, and the Bar Association of San Francisco. He has written and spoken on antitrust, unfair competition, and business torts. Mr. Sanders has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law, teaching antitrust at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Antitrust and Trade Regulation Law Section of the State Bar of California.
Mr. Sanders has been named an Antitrust MVP by Law 360, identified as a National Star for Litigation and Antitrust and a National Star for California Antitrust by Institutional Investor’s Benchmark Litigation Guide, ranked in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business Guide for antitrust, recognized as Recommended Antitrust Counsel by PLC Cross-border Competition Handbook, included in The Best Lawyers in America for Antitrust and named 2015 ”Lawyer of the Year” for San Francisco Litigation – Antitrust, listed in The International Who’s Who of Competition Lawyers and Who’s Who Legal: California, and named a Northern California "SuperLawyer" in the antitrust category.
Mr. Sanders has been a member of the Firm's Executive Committee, Finance Committee, Associate Compensation Committee, Hiring Committee, and Technology Committee. From 1995 to 2000 he served as the Partner-In-Charge of the firm's Bay Area offices.
