Aerospace & Defense

  • October 20, 2026

    Judge Rejects DOJ Bid To End NAACP Suit Over XAI Pollution

    The Trump administration can intervene in a NAACP citizen suit alleging X.AI Corp. unlawfully installed dozens of polluting gas turbines to power a data center, but cannot unilaterally dismiss the suit as it claimed, a Mississippi federal judge has ruled.

  • October 20, 2026

    DOD Contractor Fights $5M Demand Over Forgiven PPP Loan

    A U.S. Department of Defense contractor has told the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that the government has wrongly demanded more than $5.3 million after the company had gotten part of its COVID-19 pandemic loan forgiven, alleging unequal treatment to contractors.

  • October 19, 2026

    Ex-OpenAI Engineer Must Stay In Custody In Recording Case

    The former OpenAI product team engineer accused of hiding a secret recording device in an executive conference room has been ordered to stay behind bars after prosecutors argued he has "considerable resources and ties to Saudi Arabia," according to news reports and the government's motion for detention.

  • October 19, 2026

    Board Says Navy's 161-Day Extension Changed Its Deal

    The Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals has found the Navy improperly required a contractor to provide an extra 161 days of pier support for the USS Chosin, and ordered the Navy and the company to hash out appropriate compensation.

  • October 19, 2026

    NSO Avoids Contempt As WhatsApp Says It's Still Hacking

    An Israeli spyware company isn't going to be held in contempt on allegations it violated a court order restricting its use of WhatsApp because the order wasn't so specific that it banned the company from using accounts it already had, only restricted it from making new ones, a judge has ruled.

  • October 19, 2026

    Air Force Must Redo Price Analysis In Construction Contract

    The U.S. Court of Federal Claims ordered the U.S. Air Force to conduct a new price reasonability analysis for a worldwide construction services procurement, finding "a greater than an insubstantial chance" that the protester could become an awardee.

  • October 19, 2026

    Calif. Appeals Court Revives Claims In Northrop Wage Row

    A California appeals court has partially reopened a former employee's suit alleging that Northrop Grumman illegally issued multiple wage statements per pay period to some of its workers, ruling that a trial court must decide if the company's actions were in good faith before it can award damages.

  • October 19, 2026

    Intel Seeks FCC Waiver For Vehicles Used In Chip Plants

    Intel Corp. has asked the Federal Communications Commission to exempt certain automated vehicles used in its chip-making process from an FCC restriction on foreign-made robotic devices.

  • October 19, 2026

    Feds Say FBI Agents Can't Block Probe Of Mar-A-Lago Case

    The U.S. Department of Justice urged a Florida federal court to reject FBI agents' second request to clarify a prohibition on releasing information in a report on President Donald Trump allegedly storing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, arguing it's an attempt to block a grand jury probe over mishandling the investigation.

  • October 19, 2026

    BofA Pushes To Dodge Renewed Military Interest Claims

    Bank of America urged a North Carolina federal judge to reject military service members' attempt to revive dismissed claims asserting that its credit card practices violated lending protections, arguing that they misinterpret the law.

  • October 19, 2026

    Army Corps Must Pay For Unauthorized Home Security Work

    The Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals has found the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers responsible for damages at a rental house in West Africa, determining the lease did not authorize the government to make major security alterations to the property.

  • October 19, 2026

    High Court Denies Review Of Navy Contract Termination Suit

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider a federal contractor's dispute over the Navy's early termination of a fixed-price agreement due to staffing failures, after an appellate panel determined that the government had a right to cancel the contract for default.

  • October 19, 2026

    Justices Reject 9/11 Plea Deals

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to tackle two cases challenging former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's decision to yank back plea deals that had already been inked with three 9/11 co-conspirators.

  • October 18, 2026

    Trump Waives Russia Sanctions, Tariff Law After Fuel Deal

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order to suspend Russian sanctions and tariff provisions contained in a law passed earlier this year by Congress in response to Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine.

  • October 16, 2026

    Suing The Trump Admin Can Have Massive Impact, Attys Say

    Lawyers representing clients against the federal government spoke Friday about the challenges and rewards of such litigation in the Trump era, with plaintiff-side powerhouse Elizabeth Cabraser pointing to the potential for massive impact, including one case in which she successfully got more than a billion dollars in grant funding reinstated.

  • October 16, 2026

    GAO Finds Workforce Slump In Nuclear Weapons Agency

    The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a new report Friday finding that the agency responsible for managing the country's nuclear weapons stockpile has seen its number of mission-critical employees continue to drop amid the highest workload since the Cold War.

  • October 16, 2026

    Swedish Defense Co. Sues Verizon For Patent Infringement

    Swedish company Sectra Communications AB has accused Verizon Communications of infringing a patent it acquired for the advancement of a communication system that offers secure information sharing services to government agencies.

  • October 16, 2026

    FCC Says Five Eyes Allies Share Cybersecurity Info

    The Federal Communications Commission is working with foreign counterparts in the Five Eyes security alliance to share data on cyber risks, the U.S. agency said Friday.

  • October 16, 2026

    Super Micro Board Sued Over Alleged China Diversions

    A Super Micro Computer shareholder hit company directors and officers with a derivative suit accusing them of enabling an alleged scheme that sent artificial intelligence tech to Chinese companies in violation of export controls, misleading investors and harming the company.

  • October 16, 2026

    TI, Intel Say Ukrainians Still Show No Link To Russian Strikes

    Technology companies including Texas Instruments Inc. and Intel Corp. are again urging a Texas federal court to throw out a set of consolidated suits alleging they allowed their components to get into Russian weapons used to target civilians, saying a second amended complaint still fails to link their conduct to injuries.

  • October 16, 2026

    Could A Criminal Sentencing Case Upend Loper Bright?

    U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is concerned that a ruling instructing trial courts to defer to the U.S. Sentencing Commission's interpretation of federal sentencing guidelines could blow a "pretty big hole" in the court's recent rejection of deference doctrines. His colleagues, however, don't appear as perturbed.

  • October 16, 2026

    9th Circ. Won't Rethink $2B Devas Arbitral Award Confirmation

    The Ninth Circuit said Friday it will not disturb a unanimous three-judge panel's decision to enforce a $2 billion arbitral award issued to a satellite communications company, rejecting the award debtor's petition for a rehearing by the full court.

  • October 16, 2026

    China Tightens Export Controls On AI, Biotech Technologies

    China will add 40 new products spanning across the artificial intelligence, biotechnologies and photovoltaic sectors to a pre-export registration requirements list, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced Friday.

  • October 15, 2026

    Ex-FBI Agents Claim Trump's Vendetta Led To Firings

    Ex-FBI agents and analysts who investigated President Donald Trump's retention of classified documents sued FBI Director Kash Patel in D.C. federal court Thursday, alleging Patel unconstitutionally fired them after a video of him drinking went viral to get back in Trump's good graces and "to satisfy the president's personal vendetta."

  • October 15, 2026

    Anthropic Urges DC Circ. To Revisit Defense Supply Risk Ban

    Anthropic has urged the D.C. Circuit to reconsider a split panel's decision allowing the Pentagon to exclude Claude artificial intelligence models from its supply chain, saying the decision, if left standing, puts U.S. companies at risk of punishment for refusing Pentagon demands.

Expert Analysis

  • Why Importers Should Assess IEEPA Refund Claims Now

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    Businesses that wait for direction from U.S. Customs and Border Protection or the courts before seeking refunds of their finally liquidated International Economic Emergency Procedure Act duties in court may find them out of reach as the earliest potential limitation deadlines are approaching, says Samuel Finkelstein at LMD Trade Law.

  • What Anthropic Security Ruling Means For Gov't Contractors

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    In light of the D.C. Circuit ruling backing the U.S. Department of Defense's decision to remove Anthropic's Claude artificial intelligence models from its supply chain, there are a few steps contractors can take in response, including assessing whether to eliminate use of Anthropic products entirely, say attorneys at Blank Rome.

  • Testing AI's Promise For Large-Scale Document Review

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    Our document-review comparison of attorneys' responsiveness and issue coding decisions versus predictions generated by artificial intelligence across 1,600 documents suggests that these tools can offer a reasonable and reliable basis for improved discovery workflows, provided lawyers understand where guardrails are needed, say attorneys at Redgrave.

  • AI Meeting Recaps Pose New Discovery And Privilege Risks

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    The New York City Bar Association’s recent ethics opinion, cautioning attorneys not to record nonclient conversations with artificial intelligence tools, reflects an emerging view that AI meeting recaps are now a distinct business record category, meaning counsel should set meeting-level controls and apply framework-level updates, says William Wright at Faegre Drinker.

  • What Opt-In Framework Means For Novel Space Activities

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    The U.S. Department of Commerce's Office of Space Commerce is advancing a voluntary certification framework for commercial space activities not covered by existing licenses — but it's unclear whether this approach becomes a durable mission authorization regime, and separate legal permissions from agencies may still be necessary, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • FTC Push May Create Dual Origin-Claim Risks For Contractors

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    Recent Federal Trade Commission actions involving Made in USA advertising requirements offer a preview of enforcement themes that may impose dual compliance burdens on government contractors that are also subject to Federal Acquisition Regulation Buy American restrictions, says Amy Hoang at Seyfarth.

  • Series

    Playing Bid Whist Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    As a child, I viewed bid whist as a family tradition and a source of friendly card game competition, but as a lawyer, I see it as a tool that has helped me cultivate skills like communication, teamwork, risk assessment and composure, says Keyonn Pope at Riley Safer.

  • FCC Robotics Restrictions Raise AI Compliance Risks

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    A recent "covered list" update from the Federal Communications Commission places restrictions on foreign-produced advanced robotic devices’ ability to obtain new authorizations, creating a framework that is poorly suited to continuous artificial intelligence updates, and raising several transactional and contractual challenges, says Kim Larsen at Stinson.

  • Opinion

    Calif. Bill Goes Too Far In Trying To Regulate Attorney AI Use

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    California’s first-in-the-nation act regulating how attorneys and arbitrators use generative artificial intelligence will likely soon become law, but read broadly, the provisions may dissuade lawyers from employing AI at all, thereby depriving them of key work tools, says Joshua Wurtzel at Schlam Stone.

  • 4 Paths To AI Safety Coordination Amid Antitrust Debate

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    Frontier artificial intelligence companies have more room for collective safety work than the debate over an antitrust waiver suggests, with several existing avenues providing different degrees of protection and oversight, says Evan Miller at V&E.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Cultivating Good Judgment

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    Law schools generally overlook the role that solid judgment skills play in real-world practice, but attorneys can bridge the gap by strengthening their abilities to assess a case’s strengths and weaknesses, develop and execute effective strategies, and provide clear recommendations to clients, says Manny Caixeiro at Venable.

  • Contract Disputes Recap: Check Your Signatures, Cites, Sums

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    Three recent decisions from the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals show different ways parties on either side may do real damage to their own position through motions practice, says Edward Arnold at Seyfarth.

  • Attorneys Using AI May Have Ethical Duty To Redact Docs

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    The trajectory of legal ethics guidance in recent years strongly suggests that as redaction technology becomes more accessible, the failure to use it when uploading highly confidential materials into artificial intelligence tools will become increasingly difficult to defend as reasonable, say attorneys at Lewis Brisbois.

  • Bid Protest Spotlight: GAO Lessons For Small Biz Contractors

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    In this month's bid protest roundup, Alissandra McCann at MoFo offers small business takeaways from three recent U.S. Government Accountability Office decisions about rule-of-two challenges, joint ventures maintaining service-disabled, veteran-owned small business certifications, and joint venture and teaming arrangement eligibility distinctions.

  • Series

    Juggling And Unicycling Make Me A Better Lawyer

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    Because I juggle (sometimes with fire) and ride the unicycle, friends and family used to joke that I should join the circus, but I pursued the practice of law instead and learned that my hobbies benefit my profession in several important ways, says Morgan Eddy at Smith Currie.

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