Skill: Antitrust Pricing Analysis from Document Production

1. Subject-matter triage

• Treat the production as an extraction-and-analysis task, not a general document summary.
• Build the memo from the full record of pricing, competitor contact, and related internal communications.
• If multiple pricing events, counterparties, meeting dates, or cost movements appear, enumerate them first and analyze each separately rather than collapsing them into a single representative example.
• If the record contains only one instance of a category, say so affirmatively and explain why no broader series exists on the documents reviewed.

2. Failure modes the skill is correcting

• Baseline extracts only the primary discount tiers and misses additional tiers where lower-volume customers sit; the complete pricing structure requires enumerating all discount and rebate tiers, including those applicable to smaller accounts.
• Baseline does not assess whether a cost-justification defense is available; if a price increase appears to exceed the underlying cost increase, the excess cannot be cost-justified, so the analysis must compare the price movement to the cost movement.
• Baseline does not flag deletion, non-retention, or “do not reply” instructions that immediately follow competitor communications as standalone evidence of consciousness of guilt.
• Baseline compresses separate pricing mechanisms into one narrative; tier discounts, volume rebates, special programs, and ad hoc adjustments must be kept distinct.
• Baseline reports contact events without temporal sequencing; the memo must show the communication-to-price-change pattern clearly enough to support inference work.
• Baseline describes issues without consequences; each flagged item should identify why it matters for antitrust exposure, investigation posture, or litigation risk.

3. Legal frameworks / domain conventions that apply

• Temporal-gap analysis is central: document the elapsed time between a competitor contact and a later price change, because a short interval can be probative even absent direct agreement evidence.
• Cost-justification analysis asks whether the increase in selling price can be explained by the increase in underlying costs; any spread beyond the cost movement is analytically relevant.
• Consciousness-of-guilt evidence includes instructions to delete, stop writing, avoid reply, or not retain messages after competitor contact; those instructions should be flagged as independent issues rather than buried in chronology.
• Competitive-contact context matters: pricing-adjacent discussions at trade association or industry meetings may serve as circumstantial coordination evidence when they precede later pricing moves.
• Investigation references, subpoena numbers, or similar government identifiers should be preserved because they anchor the context and may tie the document to enforcement activity.
• Antitrust analysis should stay close to the documents: distinguish direct evidence of contact from inference based on timing, topic, and follow-on pricing behavior.

4. Analytical scaffolds

1. Extract the complete pricing architecture. Capture every discount tier, rebate schedule, volume threshold, exception, and special pricing mechanism; keep tiered discounts separate from annual or cumulative rebates.
2. Build a pricing chronology. List each pricing change with its effective date, affected product or customer segment, and any stated rationale.
3. Build a competitor-communication chronology. For each contact, record date, participants, medium, and subject matter as reflected in the documents.
4. Run temporal-gap analysis. For each competitor contact, identify later pricing changes and calculate the elapsed time between the communication and the effective price change.
5. Assess cost justification. Compare the price movement to the relevant cost movement using the figures reflected in the source documents; identify any unexplained spread that may not be cost-supported.
6. Flag consciousness-of-guilt language. Isolate deletion, non-reply, non-retention, or similar instructions that appear after competitor contact, and treat each as a separate flagged issue.
7. Trace meeting-based circumstantial evidence. Identify trade association or industry meetings that discuss pricing-adjacent topics and precede later pricing changes; record the topic and the subsequent action.
8. Preserve enforcement context. Note any government inquiry, subpoena, or investigation reference and the document context in which it appears.

5. Vertical / structural / temporal relationships

• Present pricing changes in time order so the reader can see before/after movement and any clustering around contacts or meetings.
• Link each competitor contact to the first subsequent pricing change, and then note any later changes that follow the same contact.
• Where a document shows both a contact and an instruction to avoid retention or response, treat the instruction as temporally and analytically downstream of the contact.
• Distinguish between contemporaneous explanations and later rationalizations; if the documents conflict, flag the mismatch.
• If the record includes multiple customer segments or product lines, keep the timeline segmented enough to avoid mixing distinct pricing paths.

6. Output structure conventions

• Use a memo format with clear headings, not a bullet dump.
• Start with a concise executive summary of the pricing pattern, contact pattern, and highest-priority flags.
• Include a complete pricing-structure section with tables for tiers, rebates, exceptions, and any other extracted mechanisms.
• Include a competitor-communications chronology followed by a temporal-gap analysis table.
• Include a cost-justification assessment section that compares price movement, cost movement, and any remaining unexplained spread.
• Include a separate flagged-issues section for deletion, non-reply, non-retention, and similar consciousness-of-guilt indicators.
• Include a trade-association or meeting analysis section when the record contains industry meetings touching pricing-adjacent topics.
• Include a government-investigation context section if any subpoena, inquiry, or investigation reference appears in the documents.
• End with a practical recommendations section identifying the next investigative or review steps, the responsible business or legal function, and the urgency tied to the pricing or enforcement timeline.
• Use the language of the source documents for dates, amounts, and document identifiers, but do not invent missing figures or backfill arithmetic not shown by the records.
• Cite the controlling antitrust concepts by name in the prose where they support an inference, but avoid overclaiming beyond what the documents establish.

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