With great sadness, we mourn the passing of our longtime partner and leader of our US Government Contracts practice, Marcia Madsen. Marcia was an outstanding lawyer who founded Mayer Brown’s US Government Contracts practice and helped build it into the formidable group that it is today. She was revered and beloved among colleagues at Mayer Brown, throughout the Government Contracts community and more broadly throughout the Washington DC community. Yet she was unfailingly modest about her accomplishments and her contributions to the profession, Mayer Brown and the careers of the many lawyers she mentored.
Marcia’s storied career as a procurement lawyer was really her second (or third) career. Prior to law school, she served as an intern and then staffer in the US Senate. She then earned her law degree, as well as an LLM in tax (taking night courses) while working full-time. She initially worked as a tax lawyer, a field in which she might have remained but for a number of clients who needed tax advice pertaining to government-financed projects. She would later describe that period as a “crash course” in government contracts.
By the time she joined Mayer Brown in 2001, Marcia had become a leader in addressing the complex and varied issues inherent in government contracts law and was passionate about the effects of agencies’ contracting decisions on the array of industries it touched. Given her prodigious intellect and skills as a litigator, she had an extraordinary record of professional success, including in government bid protests, which were notoriously difficult to win. Her contagious personality and legal success also meant that clients were fiercely loyal to her. Over time, many of them became among her closest friends. Her enthusiasm for the field and for the practice of law rubbed off on colleagues in and outside of Mayer Brown, who routinely turned to her for insight and inspiration. On multiple occasions, she testified before Congress on matters of procurement law and policy. An abbreviated list of her leadership roles includes serving as chair of the American Bar Association’s Public Contract Law Section and vice chair of the section’s Procurement Fraud Committee, president of the Board of Contract Appeals Bar Association and as a member of the Executive Committee and the Court of Federal Claims Advisory Council, as well as the Federalist Society’s Administrative Law and Regulation Practice Group.
Marcia was also among the top women lawyers in an area of law previously dominated by men. The accolades she received over the course of her career are a testament to the respect and admiration for her in Washington and nationally. These included, among others, appearing on both the Washington Business Journal’s list of “Women Who Mean Business” and the National Law Journal’s list of “Washington’s Most Influential Women Lawyers” and receiving the Golden Eagle award from the Court of Federal Claims.
Marcia built a close-knit team of government contracts lawyers in Mayer Brown’s Washington office and would do anything to support a colleague or the Firm. She was also deeply committed to the success of our Women’s Initiative in Washington and to advancing the careers of a generation of up-and-coming women in the profession.
We will miss Marcia a great deal and will treasure the brilliant legacy she leaves behind.
