Government & Lobbying Strategies

Overview

Interpreting and shaping policy

Government policies shape how your business operates – but they are rarely clear-cut. How they are interpreted can matter as much as what they say. Our government and lobbying lawyers translate policies into commercially focused legal guidance. We combine strong government relationships with knowledge of how laws and regulations are shaped, interpreted, and enforced, helping you protect your interests in a complex regulatory environment.

With firsthand experience inside government, we partner with you to prepare for change – not just react to it. Our government and lobbying lawyers have served in senior roles within key regulatory agencies and maintain strong agency relationships across the United States, Europe, and China. We leverage this experience to help you navigate regulatory frameworks, engage strategically with policymakers, and manage risk while minimizing disruption to your business.

Additional capabilities

Data, Privacy & Cybersecurity

Data gives businesses the power to make informed decisions and compete more effectively – but collecting, storing, and using data can result in legal and regulatory exposure. Our cybersecurity lawyers help you navigate that risk while supporting the strategic use of data to enhance your business operations.

We advise on all aspects of data, privacy, and cybersecurity, from developing compliance frameworks and implementing defensible security standards to counseling on product development, AI integration, digital marketing, and data monetization strategies. We also help clients navigate cross-border data transfers, incident response and data breach matters, investigations, regulatory scrutiny, and litigation.

Privacy, cybersecurity, and data governance issues touch every part of your business. Our cybersecurity lawyers collaborate across key practice areas including technology, transactions, litigation, employment, investigations, and regulatory to address risk wherever it arises. The team also includes engineers and computer coders, former in-house counsel, and former senior government officials, including cybercrime prosecutors.

Our lawyers helped shape major privacy frameworks – including the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We also advise on other evolving state, federal, and international privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the e-Privacy regulation, and sector-specific requirements.

We work with you to assess cybersecurity maturity, identify gaps, and develop tailored risk mitigation strategies. When incidents occur, we help you respond to data breaches, ransomware attacks, insider threats, and other cybersecurity incidents with a focus on limiting business disruption and financial exposure. Our cybersecurity lawyers also guide you through sensitive investigations, regulatory scrutiny, litigation, and other disputes that arise from the misuse, loss, or theft of data.

Managing the legal and regulatory exposure associated with data use has become more complex as technologies advance and cyber threats become more sophisticated. We help you mitigate data, privacy, and cybersecurity risk through integrated strategies designed to protect your business, advance innovation, and support growth.

International Trade

Global trade rules shape how your business moves goods, capital, and technology – but they are increasingly fragmented, politicized, and enforced in real time. Our international trade lawyers help you navigate international trade law across jurisdictions, aligning compliance with your commercial goals so you can operate, transact, and grow with fewer disruptions.

With teams across key global trade centers and experience spanning policy, enforcement, and transactions, we help you anticipate risk, structure cross-border activity, and respond quickly as rules change. Our integrated approach connects international trade law with national security, regulatory, and transactional considerations – so your business can operate effectively as conditions evolve.

As sanctions, export controls, customs rules, technology restrictions, and national security regulations increasingly intersect, decisions in one area can create unintended exposure across your business. We guide you through overlapping US, EU, and UK trade and national security regulations, including:

Sanctions and export controls
CFIUS, foreign subsidies, and other national security investment reviews
Customs, tariffs, and import compliance
Supply chain controls, product compliance, forced labor requirements, and supply chain due diligence obligations
Data transfer, cybersecurity, and technology restrictions
Outbound investment and economic security restrictions

Trade risk cuts across sourcing, contracting, financing, and distribution. We help you assess exposure across counterparties, jurisdictions, and supply chains; design compliance programs that scale with your operations; and structure transactions with trade controls in mind. Our experience also extends to diligence tied to sanctions, export controls, customs, contractual protections, third-party risk management, and internal investigations and regulatory engagement.

Trade rules are often shaped through enforcement and policy decisions as much as through written law. We represent clients in trade remedies proceedings – WTO and trade agreement disputes, administrative proceedings before customs and regulatory agencies, and cross-border investigations, enforcement actions, litigation, and arbitration.

We also engage directly with policymakers and regulators to address tariffs, market access barriers, and trade policy developments. Drawing on extensive experience on Capitol Hill and before trade and regulatory authorities, we help advance your strategic objectives through targeted advocacy.

Global trade volatility can affect how you source, sell, invest, and grow. Our international trade lawyers manage that complexity with an integrated strategy – helping you navigate international trade regulation, pursue cross-border opportunities, and move your business forward in a changing global trade environment.

Congressional Investigations

When you or your company are targeted for a congressional investigation, you confront a unique challenge. An investigation can present legal, reputational and business risks—both in the immediate congressional arena and in collateral venues, including private civil actions and criminal or civil investigations on the federal or state level.

Navigating the obscure rules and legislative precedents of congressional investigations, along with the individual personalities and interests of members of Congress, requires a blend of legal and political skill steeped in decades of practical experience. Drawing on that skill and experience, we tailor our approach to fit your circumstances, going beyond the strategies and tactics typically deployed in a courtroom or before a regulatory agency.

Our priority is helping you succeed, and we use our understanding of your goals to balance legal, political and financial risks in our advice. In creating an actionable strategy, we chart a path that leverages every advantage from the procedural and substantive protections provided by congressional rules, customs and traditions.

Representative experience

Our team has represented corporations and individuals spanning every industry before almost every committee in Congress, including:

Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs)
Senate Committee on Finance
Senate Judiciary Committee
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Senate Select Committee on Ethics
Senate Special Committee on Aging
House Committee on Energy and Commerce
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
House Committee on Financial Services
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee
House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis

Our focus area leads:Todd Harrison, Paul M. Thompson

“[The firm] works extremely well with our in-house department to effectively handle many of our regulatory needs.”

Best Law Firms

Results

Represented one of the largest for-profit health insurers and a large nonprofit Blue Cross company regarding healthcare and insurance issues before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Represented Fortune 500 corporations being questioned about the companies’ tax strategies before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Clients included one of the two largest oil companies, one of the two leading US soft drink and consumer product companies, one of the largest US computer service and hardware companies, one of the biggest providers of Internet equipment in the US and one of the largest US pharmaceutical companies.
Represented a high-ranking executive of a Swiss bank in an international tax investigation conducted by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.