Working With Investors and Business Partners

Whether you are teaming with primes, subcontractors, suppliers, using open source to build your software, or pursuing cross-border investment, acquisition, or joint ventures—you can rely on these business relationships to drive growth.

But those same relationships also carry legal, regulatory, and reputational risks, especially in sectors involving government contracts, export controls, or national security.

At Cassidy Law, we help you structure partnerships, perform due diligence, manage your supply chain, assess risks in M&A transactions, and draft clear contracts designed to meet legal requirements so you can scale confidently, while minimizing risk.

Supporting Your Strategic Relationships

We work with companies and investors to design scalable compliance controls that identify and manage business partner risks, while supporting growth and operational needs. Our focus is on aligning your relationships through internal controls and contracting practices with export, national security, and government contracting requirements in a way that is consistent with your growth strategy.

Due Diligence Responsive to the Risk

Smart relationships start with informed decisions. We help you develop and conduct targeted due diligence to assess legal, regulatory, and reputational risk across partners, suppliers, customers, investors, and acquisition targets. Our goal is to right-size due diligence so it is not overkill, while protecting your interests and meeting your legal requirements.

Our experience with sanctions, export controls including International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR), and national security regulations like the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual’s (NISPOM) Foreign Ownership, Control, or Influence (FOCI) requirements allows us to tailor diligence to your risk profile. We are practical: we know how businesses operate and will work with you to understand your business, your growth strategy, your products, and services as well as your risk tolerance, while supporting compliance by:

• Developing policies and procedures for customer, partner, and investment screening;
• Assessing red flags (e.g., corruption, politically exposed persons, export, sanctions, debarred);
• Designing diligence processes that uncover how your partners operate—not just who they are;
• Advising and training on risk identification and mitigation strategies in high-risk geographies or industries.

Contract Architecture That Supports Growth

The right contracts can protect your business while clearly defining your relationship with customers and business partners so both parties are clear on what each needs to do. At Cassidy Law, we understand that a contract needs to be clear, aligned with your business objectives for the deal, and designed to protect your intellectual property, your relationships, and your reputation. Plain English agreements give you and your partners confidence that you understand the terms of the contract and support you in getting to contract more quickly. Our goal is to help you partner with confidence by:

• Drafting and negotiating non-disclosure agreements, subcontracts, teaming, joint venture, and mentor-protégé agreements;
• Reviewing and negotiating FAR/DFARS-based contracts, OTAs, SBIR/STTR awards, grants, and cooperative agreements;
• Structuring licensing agreements and software service (SaaS) agreements;
• Ensuring federal government flow-downs and clauses are included that require compliance with export, sanctions, cybersecurity, data protection, and more.

Business Structure, Investment, and M&A

Whether you are looking to reorganize your existing organization to sell to the federal government, to establish a U.S.-based business to sell to the federal government, or to invest in a dual-use AI startup or scaling a global defense platform, we work with you through the transaction to understand the acquisition, export, and national security requirements.

We provide legal guidance designed to support compliance, efficiencies, and long-term value creation. We have the experience and the relationships to collaborate with your finance and legal teams, your deal lawyers, your external accountants, and consultants so that our guidance on legal risks related to government contracting, export, and national security integrates with your business. We tailor our strategies for venture-backed and private equity-owned businesses, helping you move forward with confidence by:

• Updating System for Award Management (SAM) post-transaction;
• Supporting novation of federal government contracts after acquisition;
• Integrating compliance frameworks post-close;
• Advising on federal government contract, export, national security, and FOCI issues throughout the deal lifecycle;
• Guiding U.S. and non-U.S. investors on structuring deals to align with federal government acquisition regulations, national security, and export controls;
• Building legal and compliance systems that help portfolio companies protect and grow enterprise value for their federal government contractors;
• Assessing whether the transaction requires CFIUS review and disclosing transactions to CFIUS.

In federal government markets, your partnerships, contracts, and business structure are more than operational tools—they are strategic assets. But if unmanaged, they can expose your business to legal, financial, and reputational risk. Whether you are entering new markets, forming a joint venture, or evaluating an investment in a federal government contractor, your approach to due diligence, contracting, and business structure determines whether the relationship builds value or liability.

At Cassidy Law, we help you make informed decisions grounded in a deep understanding of procurement, export, and national security law. We bring real-world experience and tailor our strategies to your growth goals and risk tolerance.

• Advised U.S. private equity firm on legal risks related to purchases of federal government contractors in the following industry: software, information security, energy, defense technology, intelligence capabilities.
• Advised privately held, global U.S.-based professional services firm on legal requirements needed to design its business to pursue federal government contracts to reach its goal of $1 billion in revenue.
• Advised and negotiated on behalf of an AI business with a federal SBIR award on its subcontract and on refining its federal contract’s statement of work for clarity and to protect client’s IP.
• Advised client and negotiated with federal government on an OTA, including intellectual property terms, for tens of millions of dollars in software and IT integration projects to be performed across dozens of military installations.
• Drafted memo of understanding for SBIR awardee, software development business seeking to provide its software to the federal government on a limited term at no cost.
• Worked with global, publicly traded U.S.-based hardware company to determine if a business partner was prohibited party based on findings from a corporate intelligence firm and developed remediation to address finding.
• Developed due diligence compliance programs and processes for software companies, hardware companies, and professional services firms.
• Drafted checklists, one-pagers, and other guidance documents for use when selling military and dual-use items globally.