Civil litigation where the government answers.

A practice built around one defendant

Most civil litigators meet the federal government occasionally. This practice meets almost nothing else. The cases that fill the docket of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia — and this firm's — are the ones where an agency acted, refused to act, or won't say which:

• APA record-review suits — challenging agency decisions as arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law under 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), briefed on the administrative record through cross-motions rather than trial.
• Delay and inaction cases — mandamus and 5 U.S.C. § 706(1) suits when the agency simply will not decide, including the firm's OFAC license-delay docket.
• Sanctions litigation — designation and delisting challenges against Treasury and OFAC.
• FOIA enforcement — suits over ignored requests, inadequate searches, and over-withholding, where the government must justify every redaction it wants to keep.
• Local-counsel engagements — running the D.C. end of other firms' federal cases, from filing through judgment.

How a government case actually moves here

Civil practice against the United States has its own rhythm, and knowing it is most of the value:

1. Filing and assignment. ECF filing, random judge assignment, and the related-case rules that determine whether your matter joins an existing judge's docket — a designation worth getting right on day one, not after a transfer order.
2. Service under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(i). Suing an agency means serving the United States Attorney for the district, the Attorney General by registered or certified mail, and the agency or officer named. The government's time to respond — 60 days — runs from proper service, and defective service quietly costs months.
3. Motion practice. The Local Civil Rule 7(m) duty to confer before nondispositive motions, judge-specific standing orders on page limits and courtesy copies, and the reality that most government cases are decided on a motion to dismiss or cross-motions for summary judgment. Record-review cases follow their own summary-judgment logic: no discovery, no trial, the record and the briefs.
4. Judgment and beyond. Remand to the agency, an order compelling action, fee applications where a statute provides them, and the appellate path to the D.C. Circuit when the question deserves it.

What we bring to it

Three things, none of them decorative. First, subject-matter depth in the administrative and sanctions law these cases turn on — the same depth visible across this site. Second, procedural fluency in this particular courthouse: its local rules, its judges' practices, its clerk's office. Third, written candor. Clients get the honest assessment — the deferential standard of review, the government's structural advantages, the realistic range of outcomes — before filing, in writing, so the decision to litigate is an informed one. No outcome is promised on this site or anywhere else, because in this field no honest lawyer promises one.

Questions we actually get