Private Antitrust Litigation. Kessler has been recognized by numerous publications, including Chambers USA - America's Leading Lawyers for Business and Best Lawyers in America. He is recognized by Guide to the World's Leading Antitrust Lawyers and Who's Who of Competition Lawyers and has been included in Super Lawyers, Corporate Counsel Edition 2009, The Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America 2005, 2006 and 2008 through 2011 and Lawdragon 500 Leading Litigators in America 2006. Kessler is named in the 2011 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and as a New York Super Lawyer in 2006 through 2012, and he has been named as one of The 50 Most Influential People in Sports Business by Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal and that publication has named him one of the 20 Most Influential People in the NFL numerous times including most recently in 2011. Kessler has also been named a National General Commercial Litigation Star by Benchmark Litigation. Move to Winston In May 2012, Kessler left Dewey & LeBoeuf and joined the firm of Winston & Strawn. Dewey had experienced mass partner defections starting in March 2012 for a variety of reasons, and despite his best efforts in conjunction with several other of the firms most prominent and successful partners to save the firm it proved to be unmanageable. Thus, Kessler led a group of over 20 other partners, over 40 associates, and a large group of professional staff with him to Winston where he currently is a Partner and Co-Executive Chairman of the firm. In total, more than 75 people went with him from Dewey to Winston including his entire practice. Since joining Winston, Kessler led the Winston team that secured a widely reported, spectacular victory on behalf of classes of Division I college football and basketball athletes in their landmark antitrust challenge to the compensation restrictions maintained by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its member “power conferences.” Following oral argument by Kessler, on March 31, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision affirming the team’s “ground-breaking and historic” trial win in the Northern District of California, and reiterating that the NCAA is not above antitrust laws. The trial win came in March 2019, when Judge Wilken found that the NCAA was in violation of the antitrust laws by limiting the amount of compensation that college basketball and football players could receive, and issued a trial ruling