When Mel Schwarz graduated from the Law School in 1975, he found himself in a good situation. “I knew what I wanted to do,” he said. “There were only two kinds of law that I wanted to practice: antitrust and labor law. I think that kind of clarity of focus often takes longer to develop.” So clear was Schwarz’s focus that he joined the only firm that agreed to let him participate in both practices, Dechert Price & Rhoads.

It was a good match. Schwarz remained at Dechert—where his practice came to focus almost entirely on antitrust—for 27 years, in two stints bookending three years at the U.S. Department of Justice.

“I got to do a lot quickly at Dechert, including arguing an important antitrust issue in the Third Circuit as a third-year associate,” Schwarz recalled. “I really liked litigation, particularly cross-examination, and I became pretty good at it.”

His litigation skills were so formidable that when he served in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division from 1998 to 2001, he was assigned as the lead trial counsel in two of the division’s most prominent cases, against Visa and Mastercard, and in opposition to a proposed merger between Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

“It was the job of a lifetime,” Schwarz said. “Most lawyers never get to lead anything like either of those cases, let alone two of them.” The government prevailed in both matters, and Schwarz was recognized with the Justice Department’s Award for Distinguished Service.

He returned to Dechert, in its Washington, DC, office, which was the fourth Dechert office for him. He had started in Philadelphia, moved to New York, and then moved to Brussels to substitute for a departing EU antitrust specialist. “There were reasons for each move, among them that I just tend to get bored quickly,” Schwarz said, “but I would not recommend so many offices as a great career strategy.”

He departed Dechert in 2005 for Marsh & McLennan Companies—one of the largest insurance brokers and professional services firms in the world—as general counsel of a Marsh & McLennan subsidiary, Guy Carpenter, a reinsurance brokerage with more than 50 offices worldwide. While there, he also became chief competition counsel for the parent company.

Schwarz left those roles at the end of 2013. “I thought I had retired,” he said, “but being easily bored, I was soon looking for other things to do.” He worked as a legal consultant to a Lloyd’s syndicate in London (“I was the de facto general counsel,” he said) and was board chairman of a Bermuda-based reinsurance subsidiary. Having taught antitrust law at George Washington University Law School earlier in his career, he returned to teaching as an adjunct professor at a law school in San Diego. “A few years dividing time among New York, London, Bermuda, and San Diego is not a terrible non-retirement,” he said.

Eventually, the COVID pandemic sent him into “retirement” again, but he couldn’t resist a 2022 opportunity to return to the DOJ, where in 2023 he was again honored with an award for distinguished service.

These days, Schwarz still does some legal consulting; enjoys adult education courses, previously in San Diego and now in London; travels frequently with his wife; and visits his daughters and grandchildren.

Although he was an outstanding student at the Law School—he graduated Order of the Coif—Schwarz said those days were not a wholly pleasant experience for him. “I can’t say I loved my time at the Law School, but it definitely grew on me over the years,” he said. “I have come to look back on it with great appreciation. I learned the law and I learned how to think about the law, and that enabled me to have the career I wanted and then some. For that I am grateful to the Law School.”