The following is an excerpt from Practice Perspectives: Vault's Guide to Legal Practice Areas.
Megan Watts, Director—Real Estate (2023)
Megan’s clients rely on her perspective and judgment in a variety of commercial real estate matters. Her work over the years has been wide-ranging, from the nuts and bolts of acquisitions and dispositions of single assets to structuring investments in private real estate funds to affordable housing tax credits. She counsels clients that are involved in developing and investing in retail, office, industrial, and multifamily properties across the United States with an emphasis on rendering practical advice based on experience.
As a result of her regular representation of both developers and investors in joint venture transactions, Megan has a well-built understanding of the motivations and needs of her clients (and their potential partners) that enables her to identify solutions and help them reach successful outcomes on their transactions. She also maintains a steady practice in affordable housing development and investment as counsel to several CDCs and other affordable housing developers in Massachusetts.
Describe your practice area and what it entails.
As a member of the real estate group at Goulston, I have exposure to a full range of real estate transactional work—from master-permitted projects in predevelopment stages in the Boston area to structuring programmatic investment in tangible assets across the country. I have increasingly focused on equity work, negotiating joint venture agreements on behalf of developers and investors, but I also get my hands dirty with more traditional purchase and sale transactions and real estate due diligence as a result of my client mix.
What types of clients do you represent?
I have the pleasure of working with some of the highest-quality developers in the Boston area whose efforts are seen all throughout New England—New England Development, Samuels & Associates, Leggat McCall Properties, and WS Development, to name a few. My practice also involves work on a national level, particularly with some of our investor clients like CrossHarbor Capital Partners and Liberty Mutual Insurance Company.
Recently I’ve also gotten to see a number of individuals (often from existing clients) striking out on their own as developers. It's been fun to work with these clients at the early stages of their businesses. In addition to the deal work, I have had the opportunity to help them think through (and document) how they want to form and operate these new companies.
What types of cases/deals do you work on?
At the moment, I have a lot of development deals (as opposed to existing, built projects), and many of them are local to me. For the last four years I have been involved in a 60-acre development in Woburn where our client has built out the infrastructure for multiple large commercial projects to be constructed, which has required a huge variety of legal documentation—everything from joint venture agreements to purchase and sale agreements to development agreements and construction contracts. And then there are the one-off deals that come and go in a matter of 90 days (until three or four years later, when the client calls in connection with a sale of the same project).
How did you choose this practice area?
I was never interested in litigation, so transactional work was the natural alternative, and I enjoy the tangible nature of real estate projects. I gravitated early on towards the “deal” work because of the pace and level of detail and organization required—there was a lot of instant gratification in being able to literally cross items off a checklist.
Now that I am more regularly involved in negotiations of the deals themselves, I enjoy the engagement with clients and the other parties to the agreement, where the goal is to reach a positive outcome for all sides.
What is a typical day like and/or what are some common tasks you perform?
My typical day is often a messy mix of calls, review of materials, and drafting of documents. I am often juggling 5 or 6 different matters in a given day (and those are the ones I know about—it’s pretty typical to get one or two calls or emails with out-of-the-blue requests). It is still a constant juggle (which is part of what drew me to this kind of practice in the first place). When I have a few hours free of interruptions, I appreciate the quiet time to focus on drafting and thinking through material business issues.
What training, classes, experience, or skills development would you recommend to someone who wishes to enter your practice area?*
There is a lot to learn about the business of real estate. Any background learning in accounting and investment economics provides very good context for what our clients do to make their deals pencil out. And exposure to real estate projects, such as by attending talks about developments in process. Oftentimes there are local real estate industry groups that schedule programming with opportunities for people new to the area to attend.
For purposes of starting out as a new attorney, I recommend focusing on writing and organizational skills—no matter what area you go into, you will need both of those on a regular basis.
What is unique about your practice area at your firm?
The breadth and depth of the experience among the 100+ attorneys that work in our real estate group is hard to beat. Different attorneys at Goulston practice in almost every different area of real estate law. Other than local counsel issues in jurisdictions where we do not practice, there is almost always someone you can find for input on a question in real estate. And because of our platform, our clients bring us work that is incredibly varied, challenging, and engaging.
What are some typical tasks that a junior lawyer would perform in this practice area?
Similar to other transactional practices, a junior lawyer in the real estate group at Goulston will be responsible for reviewing due diligence materials and keeping track of a deal, often by keeping a checklist that identifies what needs to be done for a particular matter. When a deal is closing, junior associates help with all of the paper and signatures needed to formally document all of the agreements that have been made between the parties. There are also opportunities to work on longer-term permitting matters, which often involve research.
What kinds of experience can summer associates gain at this practice area at your firm?
Because the real estate group is the largest group at Goulston, there are usually several opportunities for summer associates to be integrated into a deal team (e.g., helping to close a purchase of property) or be tasked with research for a development project or help draft one-off agreements for clients. We also line up meetings with clients where the summer associates can hear (and often see) about a project in process.
How important is collaboration in effectively practicing real estate law?
The importance of collaboration in doing my job is evident on a daily basis. While there are many examples, I can highlight two in particular. First, there are many, many components to a real estate project, including permits, financing, leasing, and asset management. You cannot be an expert in all of those things. If I were not able to rely on my colleagues to provide good advice in areas that I am not as well versed in, I would not be able to serve our clients as well as I think we do. Second, some of the work I do is just very complicated. I regularly bounce ideas off colleagues with more or different experiences so that I can provide the best advice possible. I encounter new questions pretty regularly, even after 13 years of practice. I’m so appreciative that I have the other attorneys at Goulston as a resource when these questions come up!