The Antitrust Division’s Return To Targeted Second Requests: Real Milestones, Modest Relief, But No Reason To Wait

The DOJ Antitrust Division's new model timing agreement offers merging parties an optional “Expedited Consideration” path: a negotiated Priority Production targeting potentially dispositive issues, followed by a Front Office meeting within 21 days and a Division decision within 14 days thereafter to close, modify the Second Request, or proceed in full.

The off-ramp is genuine but discretionary — unless the Division closes early, the Earliest Closing Date remains keyed to full compliance (ordinarily 60 days after certification), so parties should negotiate the Priority Production backward from the decisive issue while maintaining a parallel full-compliance workstream.

Targeted review can succeed where the parties build an ordinary-course documentary record that actually resolves the potentially dispositive issue — the Division can be expected to test the parties' substantive claims against ordinary-course documents and data, from the parties and from third parties, rather than accept