Colloquia
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n February, GW Law hosted a colloquium on emerging issues in the use of offsets in international procurements. Professor Christopher R. Yukins and Andrew D. Irwin of the law firm Steptoe & Johnson moderated the program. Speakers included Ohad Cohen, commercial attaché at the Embassy of Israel in Washington; Varun Nikore, senior vice president–international at Tri Polus Ltd.; and Lorrine (Lori) Romero, senior counsel for Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems. The discussion addressed the range of approaches used with offsets, including the different approaches adopted by the governments of various countries, including Israel and India, as well as the experience of contractors working in those countries. The colloquium was held in cooperation with the ABA Section of International Law’s Procurement Committee and the ABA Public Contract Law Section’s International Procurement and Acquisition Reform and Emerging Issues Committees. In March, GW Law hosted Professor Martin Burgi of Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) speaking on recent developments in European Union procurement law. Professor Burgi, who has a long-standing academic relationship with GW’s Government Procurement Law Program, serves as professor of German and European public law in RUB’s faculty of law. GW Law students and faculty, local practitioners, and procurement
professionals from international financial institutions, including the World Bank, attended his talk, which was followed by a lively discussion. The program was held in cooperation with the ABA Section of International Law’s International Procurement Committee and the ABA Public Contract Law Section’s International Procurement Committee.
Joshua Schwartz (L) and Bill Kovacic.
Chris Yukins (L) and Andy Irwin, JD ’96, of Steptoe & Johnson.
Professor Martin Burgi
GW Law Student Wins Two Writing Awards
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ollin Swan, JD ’12, won two prestigious writing competitions in spring 2012 for papers he wrote in the area of government procurement law. His paper on the evolving reality of personal services contractors won a writing competition held by the Section of Public Contract Law of the American Bar Association. Mr. Swan presented a talk on his paper to the Section’s Federal Procurement Institute in Annapolis, Maryland, in March. Later in the spring,
Mr. Swan’s paper on the Synchronized Pre-Deployment and Operational Tracker— a centralized interagency database used by the federal government to monitor military contractors—won a competition held by the National Contract Management Association; he made a presentation on that paper at the NCMA’s World Congress in Boston in July. These articles are now in print in the GW Law Review and the Journal of Contract Management, respectively.
Collin Swan
Fall 2012 | Government Procurement Law Perspectives 11