The customs bar was never designed for a moment like this. For most of the past half-century, lawyers who practiced at the U.S. Court of International Trade operated in a genteel specialty: antidumping administrative reviews, the occasional Section 1581(i) residual jurisdiction claim, a steady diet of classification disputes over the difference between a "doll" and a "toy figure." The bar itself is small — measured in the low hundreds of attorneys with active CIT admissions and regular docket experience. Judicial dockets at the Court typically ran a few hundred new cases per year.

That equilibrium ended in early 2026. Following the Supreme Court's February 20 decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, which struck down the tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, more than two thousand importers filed refund actions at the CIT within eight weeks. According to CBP's own declarations, the underlying universe of affected importers exceeds 330,000. Even under the most optimistic read of the Court's March 4 order — in which Judge Richard K. Eaton indicated that refund relief may extend "to all importers of record" without each filing suit — the downstream legal work is enormous: protest preparation, refund-package assembly, pass-through analysis for class-action defense, and the coordination of recovery with downstream customers and insurers.

For the importer trying to retain qualified counsel, the practical question is no longer whether a case has merit — the Supreme Court has effectively decided that — but whether a lawyer with the right admissions, capacity, and conflict posture can be engaged at a workable fee in the available window. What follows is a practitioner's field guide.

I. The Three Categories of Counsel

Attorneys marketing tariff refund services since March fall into three recognizable groups, and the distinction matters.

1. Traditional customs and trade boutiques.

These are the firms whose partners have appeared at the CIT for decades — Barnes, Richardson & Colburn; Grunfeld Desiderio; Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg; Neville Peterson; Sidley's trade group; and similarly situated practices. Their advantage is deep familiarity with the Court's local rules, the practical mechanics of protest and liquidation, and working relationships with CBP counsel. Their limitation, at present, is capacity: most of these firms are already retained on multiple pending refund actions and have effectively stopped taking new small-dollar engagements.

2. AmLaw 100 international trade groups.

Most large firms maintain an international trade practice that covers customs, export controls, sanctions, and CFIUS work. Many have capacity to absorb additional IEEPA refund engagements, but rates are correspondingly higher, and conflict checks are more elaborate — particularly for importers whose corporate affiliates may have adverse interests across the firm's book of business.

3. Class action and mass tort entrants.

A newer and less predictable category. Several plaintiff-side firms with experience in consumer class actions and mass tort coordination have begun marketing tariff refund services, often on contingency. Some are competent and capitalized; others are not. Because the CIT's rules of admission differ from ordinary federal district court practice, an attorney's general civil litigation credentials do not necessarily establish ability to prosecute a refund action effectively.

II. What "CIT-Qualified" Actually Means

Admission to the bar of the U.S. Court of International Trade is a separate credential from admission to any state bar or to any federal district court. It is granted upon application under USCIT Rule 74 and requires, among other things, good standing in at least one state bar and sponsorship by an attorney already admitted. The admission itself is not difficult to obtain; the meaningful credential is actual docket experience.

When evaluating counsel, ask for specifics. The following are useful discriminators:

• Prior CIT filings. How many actions under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(a) — the jurisdictional provision governing protest denials — has the attorney personally signed? The answer should be verifiable against the Court's CM/ECF docket.
• Liquidation and protest practice. Customs protest procedure under 19 U.S.C. § 1514 and the supplemental regulations at 19 C.F.R. Part 174 is technical. An attorney who cannot explain, unprompted, the difference between voluntary reliquidation under § 1501 and protest-driven reliquidation is not the right lead counsel for your matter.
• Coordination with customs brokers. The practical flow of a refund engagement runs through your licensed customs broker. Counsel who has worked collaboratively with broker filers — as distinct from treating brokers as witnesses — will move your file substantially faster.
• Appellate experience at the Federal Circuit. The Department of Justice has signaled intent to appeal Judge Eaton's refund orders to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Counsel without Federal Circuit experience will need to associate appellate specialists, which should be disclosed at the engagement stage, not billed as a surprise later.

III. Fee Structures Worth Understanding

Tariff refund engagements in 2026 are being priced in four distinguishable ways, and importers should understand the trade-offs before signing.

Structure	Typical Context	Importer Considerations
Flat Fee	Single-entry or small-exposure matters; uncontested refunds	Predictability. Risk of scope creep if CBP manually reviews.
Hourly	Complex engagements with multiple entry classifications or appellate exposure	Budget certainty depends on counsel's discipline. Require monthly billing and budget check-ins.
Contingency	Importers with material refund exposure and cash-flow constraints	Typical range: 18% – 33%. Confirm what "recovery" means (net of interest? net of broker costs?) in writing.
Hybrid	Large enterprise matters with both refund and class-action defense components	Often reduced hourly rate plus contingency share. Most flexible but most drafting-intensive to paper correctly.

A contingency structure that looks generous to counsel (say, 33% of gross recovery plus expenses) may still be rational for an importer whose alternative is to self-finance a multi-year CIT and Federal Circuit proceeding. But it should be priced against the alternative of CBP's administrative Phase 1 process, which for a majority of importers will require no legal representation at all.

"The duties were unlawful from the moment they were imposed. That means every single cent must be returned to the importer." — Senior Judge Richard K. Eaton, U.S. Court of International Trade, March 4, 2026

IV. Conflict Checks: A Non-Trivial Problem

Because IEEPA duties were collected from importers across virtually every sector of the U.S. economy, and because large law firms typically represent multiple parties in any given supply chain, conflict checks on refund engagements are more involved than importers often anticipate. Three patterns have emerged:

• Upstream-downstream conflicts. A firm representing a component supplier's refund claim may face conflict with finished-goods retailers whose consumer class actions turn on whether refund proceeds were passed through. Waivers are possible but should be negotiated carefully.
• Foreign parent conflicts. Importers of record that are U.S. subsidiaries of foreign parent companies should expect expanded conflict searches, particularly at firms with significant non-U.S. practice exposure to the parent's home jurisdiction.
• Insurer subrogation conflicts. Where marine cargo or trade-credit insurers paid out on tariff-related claims, subrogation rights may create a counterparty whose interests diverge from the importer's on allocation of recovered funds.

None of these conflicts is necessarily disqualifying, but each must be identified before, not after, a retainer is funded. Reputable counsel will volunteer a conflict memo as part of the engagement process. Treat its absence as a warning.

V. The Twelve Questions to Ask Before Signing

Every engagement letter should be preceded by a diligence call. The following twelve questions will tell you, efficiently, whether you are dealing with qualified counsel — and whether that counsel has the current bandwidth to represent you.

1. Are you personally admitted to the bar of the U.S. Court of International Trade, and in what year were you admitted?
2. How many IEEPA-related refund actions have you personally signed since February 20, 2026?
3. Who will be the lead partner on my matter, and who will be the day-to-day associate or counsel handling filings?
4. What is your current caseload of pending CIT matters, and what is your firm's capacity projection through Q4 2026?
5. Have you run a preliminary conflict check against my entity, its parent, subsidiaries, and principal suppliers?
6. What is your proposed fee structure, and will you provide a written scope of engagement before retainer?
7. For entries that may fall outside the final-liquidation window, what is your view of recovery strategy?
8. Do you have Federal Circuit appellate experience, or will you associate appellate counsel? At whose cost?
9. How will you coordinate with my licensed customs broker on refund-package data?
10. What is your exposure analysis for potential consumer class action claims if we have passed tariff costs to buyers?
11. Will you provide me with a written litigation hold memo covering import documentation, pricing files, and downstream communications?
12. Will you provide a monthly status update in writing, and how do you handle billing disputes?

An attorney who answers each of these questions substantively — and in writing, after the initial call — is an attorney worth retaining. An attorney who becomes defensive, or who urges you to sign the engagement letter before working through them, is not.

VI. The CBP Administrative Path: When You May Not Need a Lawyer at All

It bears emphasis that not every importer with IEEPA exposure needs retained counsel. CBP's Phase 1 rollout, which became operational April 20, 2026, is designed to process the majority of refund claims administratively through the Automated Commercial Environment. Refund timing estimates from CBP declarations cited by Judge Eaton's April 1 order indicate processing windows of approximately 45 days after submission for clean entries, subject to compliance review.

For an importer whose entries are straightforward — consumer goods in clearly identified classifications, no related-party pricing, no pending antidumping or countervailing duty overlay, no consumer-facing downstream pricing exposure — the most efficient path may well be through the importer's existing licensed customs broker, without separate retained litigation counsel. In that case, a short consultation with trade counsel to verify eligibility and preserve protest rights, billed at a flat fee, is sufficient.

The importers who do need litigation counsel are those facing any of the following: final-liquidated entries outside the 180-day protest window; entries with related-party pricing or transfer pricing complexity; significant consumer pass-through exposure creating class action risk; antidumping or countervailing duty overlays; or refund exposure large enough that appellate-stage delay would meaningfully affect enterprise cash management. These are the matters Commerce Justice Alliance was built to match.

VII. How Commerce Justice Alliance Fits

Our companion marketplace, Commerce Justice Alliance, operates as a structured intake and matching service. Importers complete a diligence-level intake form covering entry volume, classification categories, liquidation status, pass-through posture, and capacity-to-pay. That intake is routed to vetted counsel whose practice capacity, conflict profile, and geographic admissions fit the matter. Matches are returned, with fee proposals, within 48 hours.

The model is deliberately different from a referral directory. Every attorney on the Alliance has been verified for CIT bar admission, has confirmed IEEPA refund practice capacity for the quarter, and has agreed to a standardized fee-disclosure protocol. Importers receive a comparable set of matched proposals rather than a long list of names to call.

VIII. A Closing Note on Timing

Two dates matter more than any other in 2026. The first is the date your affected entries either liquidated or will liquidate. Under 19 U.S.C. § 1514, the protest window runs 180 days from the date of liquidation. Importers whose entries liquidated in the early months of 2025 are, as of publication, approaching that window's close — and the CIT's recent orders have not conclusively preserved rights for finally liquidated entries absent a timely protest. Counsel who cannot address that window directly should not be leading your matter.

The second is the date the Supreme Court's decision in Learning Resources becomes final — March 17, 2026 — after which the legality of IEEPA duties is no longer open to dispute, and the primary mechanism for refund recovery reverts to CBP protest procedure rather than constitutional challenge. The window for strategically creative jurisdictional filings has, in other words, narrowed. What remains is the disciplined practice of customs refund recovery.

Choose counsel accordingly.

Frequently Asked Questions