Insights

Washington – August 15, 2024: The 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 42 Crowell & Moring lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 29 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

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.

As Crowell covered in a recent alert, the Department of Defense (DoD) on October 11, 2024 released a final rule (the “Final Program Rule”) formalizing the requirements, assessment processes, and related governance for its Cyber Maturity Model Certification Program (CMMC).

The federal government’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton will increase its reliance upon government contractor support to perform critical tasks in the coming months.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal, state, and local agencies charged with disaster response and recovery will look to contractors to provide everything from logistics to housing, construction, and security services.  National disaster contracting provides contractors with immediate opportunities to assist in the recovery effort, but given the time sensitivity, evolving customer needs, and critical nature of the work, contractors must be prepared to: (i) perform under tight deadlines and high scrutiny; (ii) seek clarity with respect to the scope of work they are asked to perform; (iii) properly manage contract and change order documentation; and (iv) maintain contract files for subsequent audits and other inquiries which can take place years after the recovery effort has ended.  One of the most common contract risks associated with disaster response efforts is the inevitable “scope creep” as contractors encounter ever-changing events on the ground, which puts an emphasis on record keeping and timely communications with government customers, to ensure payment for work performed.

On Monday, September 23, 2024, the Department of Justice (DOJ), released an update to its Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (ECCP) guidance.  The ECCP guidance was last revised in March 2023, which brought a number of significant changes, including a focus on compensation and incentive structures (e.g., clawbacks), and third party messaging applications.  This 2024 update, while not as significant in scope as its predecessor, nonetheless highlights the DOJ’s focus on new and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), as part of its evolving assessment of what makes a corporate compliance program truly effective, and how prosecutors should evaluate risk assessments and other management tools at the time of a corporate resolution.

Crowell & Moring is pleased to announce the launch of our Government Contracts Breakfast Series. All of the sessions will be held in Northern Virginia and focus on issues most important to government contractors. Our June session is described below.

Join us for a webinar discussion of the U.S. Department of Treasury’s new final rule on the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The final rule governs the state, local, and Tribal governments’ eligible uses of the $350 billion dollars of funds available under ARPA and imposes regulatory requirements on these recipients, which are flowed down to subrecipients and contractors. Our webinar will help contractors navigate the SLFRF, and cover the following key areas:

Please join us on Wednesday, November 10 at 3 pm EST, for a follow-up presentation on the Federal Contractor Vaccine Mandate.  The Safer Federal Workforce Task Force has issued additional guidance and certain federal agencies have elaborated on their policies for implementing the new federal requirements.  Our webinar will discuss key developments that have arisen in recent weeks, challenges that contractors are facing, and common questions.  We hope you will join us.  If there are particular topics or questions you would like us to address, we encourage you to reach out to any of the presenters in advance.

Please join us for a webinar that will discuss some of the key business and legal issues that companies are navigating in connection with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and its cross-jurisdictional impacts. Topics will include supply chain disruption, labor and employment, employee mobility, commercial contracts, government contracts, health care, insurance coverage, privacy, crisis management and continuity of operations, and more. 

Click below to listen or access from one of these links:

This week’s special edition focuses on DOD’s final rule formalizing the requirements, assessment processes, and related governance for its Cyber Maturity Model Certification Program (CMMC), and is hosted by Peter Eyre, Yuan Zhou, and Michael Gruden. Crowell & Moring's "Fastest 5 Minutes" is a biweekly podcast that provides a brief summary of significant government contracts legal and regulatory developments that no government contracts lawyer or executive should be without.

This week’s episode covers DOJ’s update to its Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs guidance, a proposed rule to amend the DFARS to implement updates to the Truthful Cost or Pricing Data statute (also known as the Truth in Negotiations Act or TINA), and reminders about common considerations for companies supporting disaster response efforts, and is hosted by Peter Eyre and Yuan Zhou. Crowell & Moring's "Fastest 5 Minutes" is a biweekly podcast that provides a brief summary of significant government contracts legal and regulatory developments that no government contracts lawyer or executive should be without.