Insights

Washington – August 17, 2023: The 2024 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 47 firm lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 41 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

Washington – August 18, 2022: The 2023 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 54 firm lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 32 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

Washington – January 3, 2022: Crowell & Moring elected 13 lawyers to the firm’s partnership, effective January 1, 2022. The firm also promoted seven to the position of senior counsel and 19 associates to the position of counsel. The new partners have been promoted from within the ranks of the firm’s London, New York, and Washington, D.C. offices and from across several practice groups, including Advertising & Media; Antitrust & Competition; Corporate; Energy; Environment & Natural Resources; Government Contracts; Health Care; Technology & Intellectual Property; International Dispute Resolution; Litigation; Mass Tort, Product, and Consumer Litigation; and Privacy & Cybersecurity.

 On November 12, 2024, the Department of Defense (DoD), General Services Administration (GSA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will issue an interim rule amending FAR 52.204-7 to clarify that an offeror’s failure to maintain System for Award Management (SAM) registration during the period between proposal submission and contract award does not render the offeror ineligible for award.  Providing welcome relief to agencies and contractors alike, the interim rule requires only that an offeror be registered in SAM at the time of offer submission and at the time of contract award.

Recently, there has been a significant increase in scams targeting users of the System for Award Management (SAM.gov).  Active SAM registrations are required for federal government contractors, including to receive contracts and payments.  The non-public portions of these registrations include bank account information, tax information, and other sensitive information about a company.  Recent phishing scams and efforts to gain access to registrations indicate sophisticated actors are attempting to manipulate SAM registrations, possibly for access to payments from the government, among other reasons.  Company SAM registration Administrators should protect the company’s SAM registration from unauthorized access to the greatest extent possible.

On July 9, 2024, the CHIPS Research and Development Office released a Notice of Intent (NOI) to announce a third CHIPS Act Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), which will be the first focused on the CHIPS National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program.  The NOFO will provide up to $1.6 billion for research and development activities in five areas of semiconductor advanced packaging, including (1) equipment, tools, processes and process integration; (2) power delivery and thermal management; (3) connector technology like photonics and radio frequency; (4) the chiplets ecosystem; and (5) co-design/electronic design automation.  The NOFO is expected to include prototype development opportunities in exemplar applications including high-performance computing and low-power systems needed for artificial intelligence.  The NOI also provides information about eligibility expectations and other anticipated requirements for applications.

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 third session is described below.

Please join Crowell & Moring’s Government Contracts Group on Wednesday, February 8, 2023 at 1:00 p.m. ET for a webinar on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. 

Please join Crowell & Moring’s Government Contracts Group as we discuss 2022 changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS). Among other topics, we will cover: revisions to the Buy America Act; new FAR requirements that certain entities disclose their use of workforce and facilities in China; proposed changes to the DFARS on noncommercial computer software; and new and proposed FAR amendments implementing changes to the Small Business Administration’s regulations.

Join us for this second webinar in our series aimed at exploring best practices in mergers & acquisitions involving government contractors. In this webinar, we will focus on national security-related issues and risks impacting transactions involving government contractors. Topics will include: