Barbara Bates (née Dufkova) joined Burns Charest in 2023 after graduating from Harvard Law School with an LLM degree. Prior to that, Barbara spent more than four years as an associate at a law firm in Prague focusing mostly on antitrust law and regulation. She participated in advising clients in connection with antitrust law compliance, merger approvals, state aid, anticompetitive agreements and abuse of dominance, including representing in front of the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition and the European Commission, as well as litigation in front of the Czech courts. She also participated in providing complex legal services in relation to regulated sectors such as telecommunications, energy, transport, transport infrastructure etc.
Barbara grew up in the Czech Republic. She received her Master’s, Juris Doctor’s and PhD degrees from Charles University, and also pursued LLM studies at National University of Singapore. During her studies, she interned at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg and at Boston Consulting Group. She coauthored a publication commenting on the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the protection of competition (Wolters Kluwer 2021) and a treatise on Czech Foreign Investment Screening Act (C.H.Beck 2022), and published articles on antitrust topics in both Czech and international law journals. Recently, she has been featured in Euro’s 2023 cover story as one of the top 100 women of the Czech legal business in the Competition Law & Public Procurement category.
Honors
Top 100 Women of the Czech Legal Business, Competition Law & Public Procurement (2023 & 2024)
Publications
Jan Kupcík, Barbara Dufková & Martin Švec, Zákon o proverování zahranicních investic. Komentár. [Foreign Investment Screening Act. A Commentary.] (C.H.Beck 2022)
Barbara Dufková, Economic Inequality and Poverty in Competition Law: A Developing Country Perspective, in Competition Law and Economic Inequality 217 (Jan Broulík & Katalin Cseres (eds), Bloomsbury Publishing, Hart Studies in Competition Law 2022)
Barbara Dufková, Hledání modelu regionálního soutežního práva pro Sdružení národu jihovýchodní Asie (ASEAN) [In Search of a Regional Competition Law Model for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)], 161(10) Právník 973 (2022)
Barbara Dufková, What Can the EU Learn from the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Guidelines for the Platform Economy Industries?, in EU Antitrust: Hot Topics & Next Steps 179 (Václav Šmejkal (ed), Eva Roztoková Publishing 2022)
Barbara Dufková, ‘Gun Jumping’ in the Merger Implementation in the EU in Light of the Altice Case, in Challenges of Law in Business and Finance 95 (Jan Škrabka & Nicole Grmelová (eds), Adjuris – International Academic Publisher 2021)
Václav Šmejkal & Barbara Dufková, Soutežní právo EU – casebook: rozsudky SDEU 2006-2020 [EU Competition Law: Case Law of the CJEU 2006-2020] (Wolters Kluwer 2021)
Jirí Kindl & Barbara Dufková, Network Sharing and Counterfactual Analysis under EU Competition Law, in Competition and Telecommunication’s Network Sharing, International Workshop (Peter Mišúr (ed), Kairos Praha 2021)
Memberships
Czech Bar Association
Monopolization & Big Tech Committee of the Antitrust Law Section of the New York State Bar Association
Czech Society for European and Comparative Law
