A member of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz's antitrust department, Ilene Knable Gotts represents and counsels clients on a range of antitrust matters, particularly those relating to mergers and acquisitions. Ms Gotts began her career as a staff attorney at the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission in conduct and merger investigations.
In 1995, Ms Gotts served as the president of the Washington Council of Lawyers. She was the chair of the antitrust and trade regulation section of the Federal Bar Association from 1995 to 1997 and the chair of the antitrust section of the New York State Bar Association from 2005 to 2006.
Ms Gotts has been an active leader of the American Bar Association (ABA) for almost 40 years, having served on the ABA's board of governors from 2015 to 2018, as the chair of the ABA Section of Antitrust Law from 2009 to 2010, and in a variety of other leadership positions in the Section, including as the international officer and on the council. She currently serves as chair of the ABA's Standing Committee on Audit. Ms Gotts is regularly recognised as one of the world's top antitrust lawyers, including being selected in the 2007 to 2021 editions of Who's Who Legal as one of the top global competition lawyers, in the first-tier ranking of Chambers Global and Chambers USA, and as one of the 'leading individuals' in PLC Which lawyer? Yearbook.
Ms Gotts served as the editor of the ABA's treatise on the antitrust merger review process for 25 years, and has had more than 200 articles published on antitrust issues relating to mergers and acquisitions and Hart-Scott-Rodino compliance. She is also a frequent lecturer on antitrust topics.
Ms Gotts received her bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Maryland in 1980, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Her law degree was awarded, cum laude, by Georgetown University Law Center in 1984. She currently serves on the Lincoln Center Counsel's Council. In 2011, the New York State Bar Association Antitrust Section awarded Ms Gotts the William T Lifland Service Award for her service to the antitrust bar. Ms Gotts was named Best Lawyers' Antitrust Lawyer of the Year in 2016, Cablefax's Top Lawyer of the Year in 2017, received Euromoney's Women in Business Law Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, and was chosen as one of The Deal's Top Women in Dealmaking in 2023.