They’ve Got Next: Government Contracts Fresh Face Tara Hopkins

As a child, Tara Hopkins spent summers walking on drywall stilts stomping patterns into ceilings, working for her father’s construction company. Now, she’s helping facilitate multimillion dollar construction contracts for the government.

“That ability to have a conversation and understand the language of what really goes into a construction project, or those plans, is just a key element that not all lawyers really have,” said Hopkins, an associate in K&L Gates’ government contracts and procurement policy practice.

The rising star’s work spans the entire contracting process from pre-procurement advice, to proposals, to compliance investigations, to bid protests and appeals.

Hopkins successfully litigated a nearly $250 million Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center staffing contract bid protest last year on behalf of Akima Infrastructure Protection LLC at the US Court of Federal Claims when she was with Miles & Stockbridge.

She’s also been resolving a subcontractor dispute for one of the world’s leading shipbuilders on a major Army contract for K&L Gates, since she arrived at the firm last December.

“It’s make-or-break for these businesses when you’ve got a contract that large,” Hopkins said. “If there’s a dispute, at the end of the day, if you can’t get a win for your client, then they may be bankrupt.”

Hopkins is currently cobbling together a conglomerate of 12 companies to compete for a Department of Energy contract to build a regional clean hydrogen hub for K&L Gates. There’s $7 billion up for grabs to create six to 10 hubs nationwide and make the transition to a clean energy grid by 2035, as part of the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The Ohio-born lawyer understands the need for clean energy infrastructure firsthand. Her Cheshire, Ohio high school was shut down after her senior year in 2009 due to toxic ash dumped by the nearby 2,600 megawatt coal-fired Gavin Power Plant.

But before communities like the one Hopkins grew up in can make that dramatic transition to clean energy, the country will first need to invest mightily in construction projects, she said. That’s where she comes in.

“We can’t do clean energy anything until we build the necessary resources as a country,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s about building the facilities that actually have to be developed to produce,” clean energy sources like hydrogen, Hopkins added.

When Hopkins was growing up in southeastern Ohio, she hadn’t yet made the connection between litigation, construction, and protecting vulnerable communities. In fact, she didn’t even think law was in her future.

“That was not something that I ever really saw at that point in my life,” she said. “I was just trying to get out of that tiny community and make the best of my life and frankly, set myself up in a position where I wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck.”

She received a scholarship from Ohio State University and became the first member of her family to attend college, graduating in a swift three years. It was only after starting a real estate development company flipping homes in Southern California that her interest in construction and law was piqued professionally.

Hopkins went back to Ohio State for law school and began working on construction litigation cases in Ohio. It was there while she was an associate at Frost Brown Todd in Columbus from February 2020 to October 2021, where Hopkins “was drop-kicked into where I am now,” following a construction dispute on a government contract, she said.

She made the jump to D.C. in October 2021, with a newfound interest in contracting, working first for Miles & Stockbridge before arriving at K&L Gates in December 2022.

Though she’s just 32, Hopkins wants to inspire the next generation of lawyers. She mentors first-generation law students with a particular focus on those from backgrounds not often represented in Big Law.

When she was in their shoes, moot court was a crucial training ground in speaking and honing an oral argument. Hopkins just spent a week in April helping to judge the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, the world’s largest moot court competition, where 700 law students come to compete from 100 countries in D.C.

“I didn’t always have the opportunities that I try and provide people,” Hopkins said. “But when I did, it meant so much to me to be able to receive a piece of advice or a helping hand when I was trying to navigate my way through this fairly gray and very confusing world that is the law. And so being able to provide that and give it back—it just feels natural to me,” she said.