Charles River Associates (CRA) was founded in 1965 by three Harvard and MIT graduates who believed that academic rigor and real-world relevance belong in the same room. What began as an economics consulting start-up in a Boston hotel suite has grown into a publicly traded, global consulting firm with more than 1,000 consultants across over 20 offices worldwide. Today, CRA serves 88% of the Fortune 100 and 98% of the Am Law 100, advising the world's most sophisticated law firms, corporations, accounting firms, and governments on their highest-stakes economic, financial, and strategic challenges. Headquartered along the Charles River in Boston, CRA brings to every engagement a rare combination of cutting-edge research, state-of-the-art methods, and decades of proven experience — because when the stakes are highest, experience counts for more.

We are economists, financial experts, scientists, data analysts, industry veterans, and management strategists — united by intellectual curiosity and a commitment to defensible, fact-based advice. Our senior-led teams include leading academic experts and business leaders drawn from more than 70 countries across six continents, with over 35 languages spoken across the firm. More than 82% of our senior staff hold advanced degrees, and more than 35% hold PhDs. CRA was built by professors and continues to attract the sharpest analytical minds — people who thrive on complex problems, who never stop learning, and who understand that the quality of the thinking behind an answer matters just as much as the answer itself. Collegial, decent, and driven, we are a firm where rigor and humanity go hand in hand.

CRA specializes in two interlocking disciplines: management consulting and economic litigation support. Across ten practice areas — Antitrust & Competition Economics, Energy, Finance, Financial Economics, Forensic Services, Intellectual Property, Labor & Employment, Life Sciences, Marakon, Risk Investigations & Analytics, and Transfer Pricing — our experts advise clients on economic and financial matters pertaining to litigation, regulatory proceedings, and critical business strategy. Whether guiding a multinational through a high-profile merger review, providing expert testimony in landmark antitrust trials, modeling damages in complex intellectual property disputes, or shaping corporate strategy through Marakon's management consulting framework, CRA delivers objective, analytically rigorous counsel that stands up to the most demanding scrutiny. We do not offer soft consulting. Every engagement is empirical, analytical, and intellectually defensible — built to hold up in court, in the boardroom, and before regulators worldwide.

CRA exists to bring clarity to complexity. Since our founding, our purpose has been to apply the best of academic thought to the most consequential real-world problems — not in theory, but in practice, for clients who cannot afford to be wrong. We believe that rigorous, independent, fact-based analysis is one of the most powerful tools available to business, law, and government — and we have built our entire firm around delivering it. Across litigation, regulation, and strategy, we work to ensure that the advice shaping high-stakes decisions is grounded in evidence and capable of withstanding challenge. That commitment — to honest, intellectually defensible work in a collaborative environment — has guided CRA for more than six decades and remains the reason clients return to us when the stakes are at their highest.

Intellectual curiosity is the foundation of everything we do at CRA. We were built by academics and we have never stopped teaching, learning, and pushing the frontier of our disciplines. Rigor is non-negotiable — we hold our analysis to the standards of peer-reviewed research because our clients depend on conclusions that will withstand adversarial scrutiny. We value honesty and integrity in every engagement, offering objective advice even when it is not what a client might hope to hear. Resourcefulness drives us to find creative, practical answers to problems that have no obvious solution. And collegiality — the genuine belief that a supportive, inclusive, and collaborative environment produces better work — is woven into daily life at CRA, from how we structure project teams to how we invest in one another's growth.

Clients choose CRA because the quality of our thinking is matched by the depth of our experience. Our teams are genuinely senior-led — the experts who bear responsibility for an engagement are the same experts who do the work. We bring together leading academic authorities and seasoned industry practitioners, and we put them in direct service of your matter, not in an oversight role removed from the analysis. Our track record speaks across the most complex and consequential cases in antitrust, intellectual property, financial regulation, and international arbitration. Judges cite our experts' testimony. Regulators rely on our economic models. Boards trust our strategic counsel. With clients spanning the Fortune 100, the Am Law 100, and governments around the world, and with a reputation earned across more than 60 years of high-stakes engagements, CRA offers something that cannot be replicated: genuine expertise, genuinely applied.

CRA's sustainability practice sits at the intersection of economic analysis, regulatory strategy, and corporate decision-making. We advise clients across the energy, industrial, and corporate sectors on the economic and financial dimensions of sustainability — from disputes and investigations arising from ESG-related claims, to regulatory compliance and risk management, to CEO advisory and management consulting on the strategic challenges of decarbonization. Our energy practice in particular addresses the evolving demands of grid modernization, low-carbon fuels, carbon capture and storage, nuclear energy, and sustainability policy for energy-intensive sectors. We bring the same analytical rigor that defines all of CRA's work to the questions reshaping global economies: how to price carbon risk, how to navigate evolving regulatory frameworks, and how to build resilient strategies in a world where sustainability is both a compliance requirement and a competitive imperative.

CRA's Community Advancement program channels our firm's collective expertise and energy into creating lasting positive change in the communities where we live and work. Through our All-Access Initiative, we expand pathways to higher education for socioeconomically challenged students in Business, Economics, and STEM, offering internships, mentorships, scholarships, and professional development through partnerships with organizations such as QuestBridge, SEO London, the American Economic Association, and KIPP Massachusetts. Our Global Pro Bono Program deploys CRA's full range of expertise — forensic accounting, investigations, strategic consulting, and more — to nonprofits tackling today's most pressing challenges; CRA is the first and only consulting firm to receive the Sanctuary for Families Above & Beyond Award. Our Global Volunteer Program and Global Corporate Giving Program further extend our reach, with colleagues stepping up across geographies to support causes aligned with our core values. At CRA, every effort to advance our communities is an opportunity to foster growth, inclusivity, and a better future.

At CRA, inclusion and engagement are central to who we are — and they have been long before many organizations made them a priority. In 2021, we formalized this commitment by appointing our first Chief Inclusion and Engagement Officer, and our CEO joined a collective initiative to promote inclusion and collaboration across the workplace. We understand that a dynamic, diverse team is not just a reflection of our values — it is what enables us to deliver the bespoke, innovative solutions our clients rely on. Our employee resource groups — Women@CRA, OutLoud@CRA, Mosaic@CRA, and PAC@CRA — provide forums for mentorship, connection, professional growth, and cultural celebration, and are open to every member of the firm. Talent-focused recruiting practices, Widen Our Welcome events, and a robust annual learning curriculum further reinforce an environment where every colleague can bring their full range of perspectives, experiences, and expertise to the table.