Insights

Washington – December 3, 2024: The Washingtonian has named five Crowell & Moring partners to its 2024 “Top Lawyers” list, featuring the D.C. area’s best legal talent.

Washington – June 24, 2024: Crowell & Moring has been recommended in eight practice areas in the 17th edition of the Legal 500 United States. In addition, partner Daniel Forman, co-chair of the firm’s Government Contracts Group, has been named to the Legal 500’s “Hall of Fame” for Government Contracts.

Washington – June 6, 2024: Crowell & Moring earned 78 rankings for 67 lawyers, as well as 41 national and statewide practice area rankings, in the Chambers USA 2024 guide. The rankings are driven by independent interviews of clients and lawyers at peer firms.

United States Attorneys’ Offices recently announced a number of False Claims Act (FCA) settlements arising out of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). These settlements reveal several trends that PPP loan recipients should be aware of.

On February 24, 2025, the Small Business Administration (SBA) issued a “Day One” memo outlining SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler’s priorities. 

On December 18, 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas announced a $680,000 False Claims Act (FCA) settlement with Lafayette RE Management LLC (Lafayette) in connection with the real estate investment firm’s receipt of a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan at the height of the pandemic.  Crowell has previously reported on DOJ’s steady pursuit of PPP cases which have resulted in FCA settlements based on issues such as affiliation (discussed here) and ineligibility under the program’s rules (discussed here), but the Lafayette settlement is the first time that the government has intervened in a case based on the economic necessity certification that all PPP borrowers had to make on the initial loan application.  

On Tuesday, April 5, 2020 at 3 p.m. Eastern, Ken Dodds of Live Oak Bank, a leading SBA lender, will join Crowell & Moring attorneys and policy advisors in a webinar addressing the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).  Just over a week after the creation of this lifeline small business loan platform, the webinar will address updates to program eligibility, the current SBA Form 2483 borrower application, and loan calculations and forgiveness based on the SBA’s interim final rules and guidance that have been issued in the past week. 

When competing for business with the federal government today, small business status can be the “Golden Ticket” for threshold eligibility for a government contract or provide a competitive edge to securing a government contract as either a prime or subcontractor. However, when relationships are formed between a small business and another contractor (large or small), preserving that prized status is challenging, yet essential to maintaining that competitive advantage. Players of all sizes must understand when and how companies or individuals will be considered “affiliated” for size purposes in order to structure the proposed business relationship to maximize synergies, but avoid affiliation and loss of small business status. This is a true balancing act. Many of the rules and requirements are counter-intuitive, but a small business finding itself on the wrong side of the affiliation line could jeopardize its ability to compete for valuable business opportunities. 

The MCCA’s Creating Pathways to Diversity conference is designed to provide the practical tools and resources that attorneys, both in-house and at outside law firms, need to further their personal career growth and sustain organizational diversity and inclusion efforts.  Conference highlights include an opening plenary session featuring the General Counsels of Gap Inc., NBCUniversal, The Rockefeller Group and Showtime Networks and a luncheon plenary honoring the 60th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the 50th anniversary of landmark 1964 civil rights legislation and featuring, among other speakers, Charles Hamilton Houston III.

Please join us on Wednesday, September 7, 2022 for a webinar on the newly implemented Small Business Administration (“SBA”) requirements for requesting, reporting, and relying on small business subcontractor past performance. With past performance already playing a key role in evaluations and award decisions, these new requirements are certain to shake up procurement dynamics, increase prime contractor administrative obligations, and generate a wave of new bid protest challenges.

In this episode, hosts Rob Sneckenberg and Olivia Lynch are joined by colleague Amy O’Sullivan to discuss the Court of Federal Claims’ recent decision in HWI Gear, Inc., which held that the solicitation’s inclusion in full of the text of FAR 52.219-28 required a small business offeror to recertify its size status prior to award due to a post-proposal submission corporate change. Crowell & Moring’s “All Things Protest” podcast keeps you up to date on major trends in bid protest litigation, key developments in high-profile cases, and best practices in state and federal procurement.