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Antitrust

As a professional organization, IPMA is subject to severe scrutiny under U.S. Federal and State antitrust laws. Violators of these laws may be subject to both civil and criminal penalties. Accordingly, IPMA requires its staff and its members (in all categories of membership) to obey the antitrust laws in all IPMA-related activities. This document establishes Guidelines that govern the conduct of participants in all such activities - no matter how informal - including social events and gatherings before and after formal meetings or other activities.

You should never participate in any discussion or written communication in connection with a IPMA meeting or activity regarding any of the following prohibited topics:

1. Current or future billing rates, fees, disbursement charges or other items that could be construed as "price," as well as policies for setting any of these. Further, restrict discussions of past billing rates, fees or prices to ensure that others cannot infer current or future rates, fees or prices.
2. "Fair" profits, billing rates or wage levels.
3. Trends, increases or decreases in prices, billing rates, fees or wages, or disbursement charges, or their standardization or stabilizing.
4. Billing or fee procedures, or terms and conditions of doing business.
5. Future commercial or business plans or intentions, including advertising or promotional programs or plans to change production of pricing policies. This includes speculation or prediction about how "the industry" or individual companies might respond to future regulatory or market-place events.
6. Joint commercial negotiations with a customer, vendor, supplier or business partner, including government purchasers, regarding prices or terms and conditions of doing business.
7. Complaints or disparaging comments about any customer, competitor, vendor, supplier, or business partner. As in all other contexts, another law firm or corporate legal department may be considered a competitor.
8. Intent or willingness to deal with any customer, competitor, vendor, supplier or business partner. This includes both sales and purchases, and both private entities and government purchasers.
9. Current or future bidding opportunities or bid processes.
10. Market shares or levels of output or production.

In addition, the following restricted topics must not be discussed without prior review and approval by the IPMA Board and its legal counsel:

1. Conducting surveys, either under the auspices of IPMA or informally, relating to billing rates, fees, wages, profits, costs or other economic matters. Any approved survey should have the following characteristics:
   1. participation is voluntary and open to non-members,
   2. data should be of past transactions,
   3. data should be collected by an independent third party,
   4. confidentiality of each participant's data should be preserved,
   5. data should be presented only in a composite form to conceal data of a single participant.
2. Developing industry standards, codes of ethics, marketing, advertising, or other joint attempts to regulate business conduct.
3. Criteria for membership in IPMA and whether any specific person or entity should be or remain a member of IPMA.

It is IPMA's policy that its activities always be conducted well within the boundaries of the law, and consequently these Guidelines do not state legal conclusions about the precise limits of the antitrust laws. Moreover, these Guidelines do not make you an expert; if you have any doubts or questions, bring them to the attention of a IPMA officer as soon as possible.

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