Government Contracts Bid Protest Litigation

For companies pursuing government contracts, bid protests are virtually unavoidable. Whether a company decides to challenge a solicitation’s terms or a contract’s award, or must defend the government’s award to it, experienced legal bid protest support is critical. Greenberg Traurig’s Government Contracts Bid Protest Litigation team has deep experience in pursuing and defending bid protests of federal, state, and local procurements.

At the federal level, the team regularly litigates before the Government Accountability Office (GAO); the U.S. Court of Federal Claims; the FAA’s Office of Dispute Resolution and Avoidance (ODRA); the Small Business Administration’s Office of Hearing and Appeals (OHA), which includes size, status, and NAICS Code challenges; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; and the procuring agency in “agency-level protests.” Our attorneys’ deep and diverse experience includes procurements by virtually every federal agency, and services and products covering industries across the entire gamut of federal purchases.

With respect to state and local protests, the team has litigated in a wide variety of state courts and state administrative forums. Supported by more than 32 offices across the United States, including in nine major state capitals, we have litigated protests in numerous jurisdictions, including, for example, California, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New York, Texas, and Virginia.

Our attorneys handled over $15 billion of protests in 2021 alone, involving contracts ranging in value from a few million to many billions of dollars. Our experience allows us to effectively undertake the most complex and novel protest issues. Our bid protest attorneys have been recognized by Chambers USA, The Legal 500 United States, Who’s Who Legal – Government Contracts, Super Lawyers, Washingtonian Magazine, and others, and the team includes a former GAO bid protest attorney, former Court of Federal Claims and Federal Circuit law clerks, Advisory Council Members to those Courts, a former Air Force Contracting Officer, various former Judge Advocate General and other senior Department of Defense (and other agency) counsel, and former Department of Justice Commercial Litigation Branch lawyers. The team also includes bid protest attorneys with national security clearances to address classified protests and with technical backgrounds to deal with the most complicated and advanced technology. Our lawyers regularly publish and speak on bid protest topics. 

Our team has deep experience assisting clients in the debriefing process, including DOD’s “enhanced” debriefings, and in evaluating debriefing results. We can recommend whether to protest, advise on which protest grounds to assert, and assess the likelihood of protest success with the goal of best supporting the client’s objectives. Our respected attorneys can effectively pursue protests while protecting our clients’ customer relationships with federal, state, and local agencies.

Our attorneys have been involved in major protest cases involving DOD and Intelligence Community (IC) enterprise cloud computing and other contracts; NASA commercial resupply and other missions including to the International Space Station; a fleet of Army training helicopters; contracts to develop space-based defenses against hypersonic threats; major General Services Administration, Department of Energy, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Department of Veterans Affairs procurements, including contested lease awards; and many other matters of enterprise significance to clients. Our attorneys have brought and defended against protests alleging organizational and other conflicts of interest, flawed solicitations, unequal treatment, responsibility issues, flawed discussions, cost and price realism problems, sole-source procurements (including improper bridge contracts), unreasonable cost, price, technical and/or past performance evaluations, flawed cost/technical (or other) tradeoffs, and erroneous “best value” source selection decisions. Additionally, we have experience overturning award decisions of various defense and civilian agencies, which have provided our clients the opportunity to compete again and to win large federal, state, and local awards. We also have defended numerous large contract awards, ensuring our clients protect millions or billions of dollars in future revenue.