International Trade, Regulatory and Government Affairs

Advising on regulatory law, we focus on areas such as international trade, antitrust and competition, global governance and more. 

Companies that transact business around the globe must comply with a myriad of statutes and administrative rules and regulations, many of which directly affect their ability to conduct business or expand their reach. The regulatory, government affairs and public policy environment is constantly changing—affected by politics, history, legal decisions, interest groups, precedent and news events. 

What we do 

Effective compliance begins with an independent and realistic assessment of the legal, compliance, and reputational risks that could threaten your business objectives. 

We represent clients before national, supra-national and sub-national governments and administrative organizations on a broad array of public policy, legislative, regulatory and administrative issues: 

• In the United States, we work closely with clients to advocate their views to the White House and Executive Branch departments, Congress and independent administrative agencies. 
• Similarly, our lawyers are leading practitioners before the executive, legislative and judicial institutions of the European Union. 
• On a more localized level, we regularly represent clients on policy matters before national, provincial, state and local governments worldwide. 
• We also regularly advocate before international organizations, including the United Nations, regional treaty organizations and multilateral development institutions. 

The group takes a cross-disciplinary approach in our engagements, because the path to success frequently is not linear, but one that requires carefully coordinated efforts in different forums. 

Accordingly, our lawyers and policy professionals often work across borders and practice groups in interdisciplinary teams, ensuring the most efficient and effective results for our clients. And, as clients increasingly recognize, legislative and administrative advocacy is a skill that is quite distinct from defending an enforcement action or seeking to overturn a recently promulgated rule or regulation. 

Our government advocacy team includes skillful litigators and subject matter professionals knowledgeable on a wide variety of policy issues. We have one of the largest regulatory and government affairs groups of any global law firm, with lawyers and policy professionals throughout the world. Many of the members of this group have held senior elected, appointed and staff positions in all branches of government or gained important public policy experience from work in the corporate world.