Pre-Clearance Counseling

 

The federal government is our nation’s largest employer. The great bulk of government jobs, and many of the private-sector jobs supporting those jobs, require a public trust assessment or a security clearance. If you are serious about exploring these opportunities, or if you have been offered employment contingent on your securing a clearance, you should consider a knowledgeable assessment of your eligibility to get that clearance.

You may have looked at a form that you need to complete in the application process, or read something in a newspaper or an online posting, or heard something, that causes you to be concerned about some aspect of your past. We can discuss your profile with you, assess concerns you may have, and offer you insight into what you might do to improve your prospects and the processing of your application.

We also help you complete the necessary forms, which can be ambiguous or misleading. We can discuss how to answer specific questions responsively. Based on our experience, we believe some forms -the SF86 in particular- contain “lightening rod” questions that fact-checkers look at closely to weed-out candidates who are less than candid. We can point out these areas and discuss how you should best address these questions given your facts.

If you’ve already completed and submitted a form and are having second thoughts, prompt, proactive and pre-emptive supplementation is your guiding rule. Certainly, if you fail to correct material omissions or misstatements prior to questioning, you should expect that you will have to explain yourself further, in possibly multiple sessions, and will be vectoring to a security clearance appeals process. But what’s “material” and how you fix this is, like the devil, in the details. It’s here that knowledgeable counsel can help you.

Where concerns arise, we explore ways they may be resolved or mitigated. We suggest reforms in your practices or conduct that will reshape you to fit the criteria. While we certainly can’t spin gold from straw, our lives are rarely so black and white and there’s almost always room for improvement.

Our security clearance lawyers handle security clearance cases nationally.

CONTACT US ABOUT YOUR SECURITY CLEARANCE CONCERN.

By Eric-Eisen

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Posted in: Security Clearance

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