About the Firm
Built Differently, By Design.
By Design
We Had the Opportunity to Build the Firm We Wanted to Practice In.
Berry & Partners was built deliberately. We took what we had learned leading legal and compliance organizations, serving in government and in uniform, advising in private practice, and working alongside the businesses that make up the government contracting community, and asked a simple question: if we could build a law firm around what actually works, what would we keep, and what would we do differently?
We kept the standards, discipline, and depth of practice that serious work demands. Then we built the rest around how we believe great counsel should work today: personal, responsive, collaborative by instinct, and willing to use technology to make the work better rather than simply produce more of it. We built a structure with fewer unnecessary layers, more room for judgment, and a culture that remembers there are people behind every question we are asked — people with businesses to build, teams to lead, missions to carry, and lives that extend well beyond the matter in front of us.
That's what we mean by Different, by design.
A CALL TO SERVE
Some Things Stay With You.
For some of us, service began long before the practice of law. West Point. The Air Force Academy. Years as JAGs and senior advisors. Deployments, leadership, and responsibility carried in uniform. Those experiences were different, but they left behind some of the same things: respect for the mission, responsibility to the team, high standards when no one is watching, and the understanding that leadership is rarely about you.
Those principles didn't stay in uniform, and they aren't limited to the people here who wore one. They show up in how we practice, how we treat people, and what we believe it means to be trusted with something that matters. Service takes different forms over a lifetime. The responsibility remains the same: show up, be useful, and put something larger than yourself first.
LEADERSHIP
Some Things You Only Learn When You're Responsible for What Happens Next.
Our lawyers didn't simply advise leaders. Many of us were the people responsible for navigating what came next. Our experience was shaped inside Fortune 100 companies and global government contractors, while building businesses in AI and defense technology, through boardrooms, crisis rooms, company sales and labor disputes, and in environments where national security shaped the decisions in front of us.
Those experiences teach you things the law alone cannot. How to stay clear when the room gets loud. How to make decisions with imperfect information. When to push, when to listen, and when the technically safest answer isn't the right path for the organization. Most of all, they teach you that leadership means taking responsibility for the path forward, not simply identifying the risk. We bring that perspective with us every time someone trusts us enough to ask, “What do you think we should do?”
RELATIONSHIPS
Trust Is Built in How You Show Up.
Some of the relationships that helped shape this firm began across a conference table. Two of our lawyers were once longtime clients; others spent years working alongside one another. Hard questions, difficult calls, ordinary conversations, and moments that mattered built trust over time. When the opportunity came to build something together, we already knew the kind of people we wanted beside us.
We try to earn trust the same way: by how we show up. We go where the people we serve are, spend time in their communities, and listen before assuming we understand. That might mean talking story, learning the history and connections that shape a community, spending time with veterans and GovCon leaders where they live and work, or simply being there when things get hard. Sometimes people need us in the room. Sometimes they need us on the phone. And sometimes they need space to make the call themselves.
The form changes. The point doesn't — pay attention, remember what matters, and be there when it counts.
Ryan Berry
Where It Began.
Berry & Partners is new. What stands behind it is not. Ryan Berry has spent his career practicing government contracts law, serving as an equity partner at major law firms and building and leading a government contracts boutique firm that became nationally recognized and Chambers-ranked. He has built before, and many of the relationships that surround this firm were formed over years of working together across the GovCon community.
But spend time with Ryan, and those are unlikely to be the things you remember. You remember that he listened. That he remembered. That he made room for other people and took their ideas seriously. That he could see where something was going and had the patience and discipline to bring people together around it. He is ambitious about what people can build together, but remarkably uninterested in making the story about himself.
That combination of vision and generosity helped give Berry & Partners its beginning. What comes next, we're building together.
Our People