They’ve Got Next: Government Contracts Fresh Face Matt Carter

Litigating a bid protest is a lot like staring down a 95-mph fastball in the batter’s box. At least, so says Matt Carter, partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, and former Division 1 athlete for the Loyola Marymount Lions.

“We’re dealing with very short deadlines, and you’ve got to drill down very quickly, and so I get the same competitive juices going,” Carter said. “In any type of bid protest, you have to jump in, it’s a lot of pressure, and I’m able to draw on my experience as an athlete —I’m not fazed in those types of high-pressure situations.”

The leader of Pillsbury’s bid protest team, Carter’s trading card features some impressive stats: He’s netted more than 30 protest victories at the Government Accountability Office and prosecuted more than 50 at GAO, the US Court of Federal Claims, and the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Carter successfully fended off multiple bid protests last year from Second Street Holdings that would have derailed his client’s $1.3 billion lease for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new headquarters.

Thanks to Carter’s work, his client, Cayre Jemals Nick LLC, has already begun building the facility in Washington, D.C.’s NOMA neighborhood, set to accommodate 4,500 employees in a 15-year contract with a possible 10-year extension. It’s set to be completed in 2025.

“We were able to break ground and start building this beautiful new building in D.C. to house the SEC,” Carter said. “So it was a great result.”

He also challenged a $2 billion Air Force engineering services procurement in 2020. The Air Force initially eliminated Evergreen JV over its qualifications, until Carter led a protest thatGAO sustained, showing that the agency didn’t properly assess its past experience. Evergreen JV then went on to win the 10-year contract.

“We’re really good at counseling our clients about avoiding Pyrrhic victories,” Carter said. “Any good bid protest lawyer can pick nits in an agency’s award decision, but it’s not enough to overturn the award and have the agency go back to the drawing board if at the end of the day the award is ultimately not going to go to your client.”

In addition to bid protests, Carter also specializes in regulatory compliance issues, as well as suspension and debarment, where companies are barred from winning contracts over issues like fraud or poor performance .

Precision Metals Corp., a service-disabled, veteran-owned small business was debarred last year over on-time delivery issues amid supply-chain disruptions roiling the manufacturing sector. Carter helped vacate that debarment and avoid closure and layoffs for Precision’s employees, while setting a precedent for other small businesses.

“We’ve now given a road map to other contractors that find themselves in the same situation,” he said.

In between high-profile bid protests and contracting disputes, Carter lends his time pro bono to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a national nonprofit that advocates for gun control reform and provides legislative analysis across all 50 states. He acts as the key liaison between Pillsbury and Giffords, helping provide legal analysis on gun violence that Giffords used in recommendations to the Biden administration on executive action.

Carter was born into a baseball family in Danville, California. His father, uncle, and cousin all played professional baseball, with his cousin, Chris Carter, earning spots on the Red Sox, Mets, and Braves’ rosters.

Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles recruited Pillsbury’s Carter to play shortstop, where, as a freshman in 2005, he defeated future major leaguers Evan Longoria and Troy Tulowitzki in one underdog victory.

Carter made the switch from baseball to law after realizing how much his experience in the batter’s box would translate when it comes to “standing up in court, dealing with opposing counsel, trying to have to think on your feet when being peppered with questions from the judge,” he said.

He attended Loyola Law School in LA in 2011, and after a three-year stint at McKenna Long & Aldridge in L.A., made the jump to Pillsbury’s West Coast office.

“Playing baseball taught me a lot about hard work and commitment and dedication, a lot of those same things that I carry through in my legal practice,” Carter said.

“I thought, ‘well, if I can do it on the field, I can do it in the courtroom,’” he added.