Government Contracting Lawyers

Your partner in public procurement

Doing business with government and its entities provides enormous opportunity for both government customers and for contractors – but there can be challenges. Time can be tight, competition is fierce, bid costs are high, and the terms imposed can be demanding. We’re here to help at every step of the procurement process – from devising competition and bid strategy to potential disputes.

Governments are under intense pressure to tackle major budget deficits and debt burdens at the same time as delivering complex projects and services. International procurement regimes present their own compliance challenges for both contractors and government customers. Our global government contracting team brings insight and perspective from both sides of the public procurement process to drive success and growth while mitigating inherent risks. Our team is unique in that we work with both governments and global contractors on their contracting and procurement requirements.

“At every stage of the government contract life cycle, we help navigate the intricate and heavily regulated public procurement process.”

We support our government and supplier clients at every stage of the government contract life cycle: helping them to navigate the heavily regulated public procurement process, enter into new markets, develop strategic alliance and teaming agreements, handle bid protests, comply with complicated regulatory regimes and draft contracts which are ‘on market’. When disputes arise, we understand the importance of vigorously advocating your position without damaging the long-term relationships that are essential in government contracting.

Our ability to advise clients on government contracts worldwide enables us to provide seamless and efficient advice to government and contractors clients on both single and multi-jurisdictional projects, while providing insight and perspective from both sides of the public procurement process.

Government Contracting in the UK

We have a long history of advising government and wider public sector bodies in the UK. Our clients work with us because we offer them practical, tested solutions to complex problems. Find out more.

Experience

How we have delivered for our clients

Expand All

Our Competition team has been on hand to advise a variety of public sector clients over recent years on a range of competition law issues which arise during the course of government projects. We act on a full range of non-contentious and contentious Competition/Antitrust matters, including commercial agreements, abuse of dominance, behavioral and strategic advice, multijurisdictional and national merger control, competition investigations and enforcement, including cartel related work, compliance audits and programs, including dawn raid training, competition litigation, competition regulatory matters and State Aid.

We lead the market in advising government on major contracts, such as outsourcing, shared service and joint ventures. We have advised Cabinet Office and other Departments on three complex outsourcing shared services projects by way of joint venture (i) Shared Services Connected Limited - a pan-HMG back office joint venture service delivery vehicle to transform existing services to a shared platform for over 12 Government Departments; (ii) Integrated Debt Services Limited - provision of a one-stop-shop for government providing debt analysis and collection; and (iii) Crown Hosting - establishment of a portfolio of "on demand" hosting services at different levels of accreditation.

We have also advised on many day-to-day contracts such as advice to on management services agreements by which government companies provide services to third parties. We have also advised a government department for many years on the establishment of multiple and varied frameworks, including travel services, non-permanent staff, energy metering, consultancy services, fleet and office supplies. This included advice on precedent contracts and variations, transfers and interpretation of contract provisions.

Our intimate knowledge of corporate law is applied with significant government sector knowledge. We are trusted advisors to government, having acted on some of the most complex and innovative transactions undertaken in the public sector in recent years, including we on a multimillion-GBP acquisition of a designer and supplier of specialist vehicles and protection system integrations to various government departments.

We have worked with government over many years and therefore we bring, for both public and private sector clients, a deep understanding of how government litigates and how it decides when not to litigate. Our team has very close links to our commercial and contracting colleagues to provide seamless advice if ongoing contracts become contentious. Above all, we have access to the resource and expertise of one of the largest dispute resolution practices in the world.

Our team advises both public and private sector employers on a daily basis on the application of TUPE (and COSOP where appropriate) in the context of first and subsequent generation outsourcings, as well as on sales and acquisitions and a multitude of other projects in between. We have a wealth of experience in dealing with complex redundancy and restructuring programmes for many of our clients.

We are used to dealing with a high level of media and employee/trade union scrutiny on the way in which these exercises are handled. We frequently advise on strategy for managing changes to terms and conditions of employment, in both unionised and non-unionised environments, and have particular expertise in the options for dealing with changes in the shadow of a TUPE transfer. We are experienced in handling industrial relations issues and are proud to work on ground-breaking projects.

We have a wide range of experience in advising on core Real Estate, Real Estate Finance and Real Estate Litigation matters. We have previously advised various government departments on the acquisition and fit out of properties, projects to make buildings available for use by SMEs, sales and advising on shared space/collaborative agreements.