173: Decoding Government Contracts: Insights on SBA Compliance, Affiliation, and Size Standards with Adam Lasky

Today's guest is Adam Lasky, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw, where he focuses his legal practice on helping clients win and navigate government contracts. While Adam represents contractors on a wide variety of government contracting issues, his primary focus areas are bid protests, SBA regulatory compliance issues, joint venture and teaming agreement transactions, and claims/disputes.

In this episode we discuss what makes SBA regulations so complicated, calculate small business standard size and what is affiliation. As a small business you are constantly attesting to your size - so if you are mis-certifying your size and someone finds out, there are large penalties. What happens when two companies have to bring their size together? Different size standards for loans versus contracts? And yes it matters for loans also. 

Over the past decade, Adam has successfully represented government contractors in bid protests before the Government Accountability Office (GAO), U.S. Court of Federal Claims, FAA Office of Dispute Resolution for Acquisition, administrative agencies, and state courts. During that time, he has protested and defended well over a billion dollars in procurements and contract awards across a wide variety of industries, and has achieved amongst the highest GAO bid protest sustain rates in the nation.

Adam is also the author of several articles and books chapters on bid protests, including "A Practitioner's Road Map to GAO Bid Protests" and "Roadmap to Bid Protests at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims" (ABA 2010 & 2018), and the bid protests chapter of "Federal Government Construction Contracts" (ABA 2d and 3rd eds.).

This is an episode for companies that are in growth mode or they see that in their future. Growing by teaming or taking on mentors, Joint Ventures are all common strategies. But given the uncertainty between rules, regulations and policies, who to turn to, what is applicable and why it all matters is a crucial part of the equation to remain compliant while growing. 

Let's welcome our next giant, Adam Lasky.