How We’ve Helped
My FOIA clients are driven to expose the activities of government agencies that have been so far kept out of the public view. Relying on my experience overseeing administration and litigation of FOIA responses in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), I can help clients tailor their requests for maximum speed and precision. I can also help avoid the many administrative traps and dead ends that often block requests and waste requesters’ time.
Somewhat like the remote space probes exploring the far reaches of the solar system, when you send the government a records request, you are too often expected to wait an exceptional length of time for an answer that may turn out to have no value at all, “no records found.” My goal is to give your request the best chance of success, and when necessary, fight for my client’s right to a response in “20 business days.”
Accelerating a Journalist’s FOIA Case
When deadlines matter, abiding the uncertain, often lethargic pace of typical FOIA administration can be simply unacceptable. I have provided end-to-end legal guidance on investigative strategy, FOIA request design and submission, and civil litigation representation for a journalist author investigating decades of government activity for a planned book.
Advocacy Group’s Regulatory Analysis
I assisted a public advocacy organization with legal and regulatory procedural guidance for a research project on federal appropriations regulations. Gathering detailed historical sources and providing legal analysis of federal funding practices and precedents, I provided the client with a basis for presenting legal foundations and advocating beneficial policies by target federal agencies.