The financial literacy programme built for competition lawyers
Read the numbers that move cases. Find signals in financial documents before your client, your opponent, or the regulator does.
Your team speaks law. The market speaks numbers.
Every quarter, financial documents contain signals that matter to your cases and your clients. Most competition lawyers admit in private this data would help them — they just don’t have a systematic method to find it, read it, and turn it into an argument.
Signals go unread
Earnings reports, analyst notes, and regulatory filings contain decisive data that never reaches the legal argument.
Courts and regulators already use
Financial analysis is shaping landmark cases and merger decisions. Understanding how it is applied — and challenged — is now a core competency for any competition practice.
Client conversations stall
When a CEO asks about the EBITDA impact of an investigation, most competition lawyers change the subject.
A programme your team will actually use — and apply
The FLAG Programme is a structured capability-building initiative with embedded support before, during, and after the curriculum.
We meet
On-site kick-off
Online programme
Three-month follow-up
Measure ROI
On-site kick-off at your offices
We come to you. A live session at your firm to launch the programme, align it with your team’s active cases, and ensure every participant knows exactly what they are looking for.
Five-module online curriculum
Documents, financial metrics, M&A, investigations, and market dynamics. Built for lawyers with no financial background, completable in four weeks.
Three-month structured follow-up
Check-ins with participants over 90 days to track real application — M&A filings, investigation responses, client briefs. We work through live cases together.
Measure ROI
At the end of the programme, we check in with the team on their evolution, improvements, and real cases where they uncovered evidence that made a difference.
One case where your team spots the signal first pays for this many times over.
Pricing is per firm, not per seat. Get in touch to discuss what works for your team.
What reading the statements early looks like
This is not a hypothetical. These are the signals we found, documented, and published — before the market caught up.
Delivery Hero
Balance sheet & income statement analysisWe identified several red flags in Delivery Hero’s balance sheet and income statement — signals with direct implications for any potential acquisition or divestiture involving the group.
Some of those red flags hit the news. Others haven’t yet — but they will. The statements were public. The methodology to read them was the difference.
What your team will do differently
Read a net debt/EBITDA ratio and negotiate a better remedy for your client
Give a credible answer when a judge or regulator asks about numbers, without deferring to an economist
Walk into a client meeting knowing something in the last earnings call that nobody else caught
Explain to a CEO or in-house counsel the impact of an investigation on their company’s bottom line — and separate yourself from every other adviser
Find an analyst report that discredits a regulator’s argument — or confirms it early enough to act
Identify a merger situation before the deal is announced — using financial signals, not rumour
Five modules. Four weeks.
Real cases, practical simulations, and exercises built for lawyers who learn by doing — not by reading theory.
Documents & research
All the sources that contain valuable intelligence — where to find them, when to access them, and how to build a system to know first.
Financial metrics
The core indicators used to evaluate market power and financial health — with a short list your team can apply quickly, without an economics background.
Mergers & acquisitions
Real merger cases where financial data was decisive. How to turn the numbers into arguments — for clearance or against it.
Market studies & investigations
How regulators and courts have used financial data in major investigations. The arguments that worked — and the ones that didn’t.
Financial markets & antitrust
How investor behaviour and market dynamics shape regulatory decisions — and how to align legal advice with commercial reality.
Three months. Six sessions. Real cases.
The programme doesn’t end when the last module does. Over the three months that follow, we meet with participants every two weeks — online — to make sure the methodology is being applied where it matters most: in their actual work.
Progress
Each session opens with a check-in on progress, questions from the course, and where participants feel confident or uncertain. No generic Q&A — specific to each team’s practice and cases.
Live case work
We select real cases — either active mandates the participants are working on, or recent decisions relevant to their practice — and apply the FLAG methodology together: finding the signals, accessing the documents, reading the data.
Measuring ROI at the end of the three months
At the close of the follow-up period, each participant receives a written report documenting their progress through the programme and an honest assessment of their confidence with the new skills — useful both for the individual and for the firm’s training record.
Ready to bring this to your team?
Book a conversation →
Aitor Ortiz
This methodology is what we use at Antitrust Intelligence every day to find signals that matter. The FLAG Programme teaches lawyers the same systematic process — built on years of reading financial statements as a Bloomberg analyst and applying competition law in three jurisdictions. You do not need an economics background. You need a method.
100% would recommend it to a colleague.
The connection between antitrust and financial documents was always there — I just couldn’t see it before.
The course walks you through the reasoning step by step. Engaging and immediately applicable to active mandates.
I found each of the points covered important and directly usable. I would not add or change anything.
Exactly what I needed to have credible conversations with clients about numbers — without having to defer to an economist.
Are you a small firm or individual adviser? We run in-person workshops for individual practitioners. See the next edition →
