The following is an excerpt from Practice Perspectives: Vault's Guide to Legal Practice Areas.
Anna Dwyer focuses her practice on complex commercial real estate matters throughout the United States, including financing and joint venture transactions. She regularly represents financial institutions, real estate investors, real estate developers, and real estate managers in connection with their real estate investments and is experienced in working with industrial/logistics, mixed-use, office, multifamily, retail, and other real estate asset classes. Anna has represented clients in the data center, energy, education, banking, finance, food/agriculture, and hospitality/recreation sectors.
Collin Waring represents real estate investors, funds, developers, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and publicly held companies on a range of commercial real estate transactions. His practice covers acquisitions (including forward purchases), dispositions, joint ventures, recapitalizations, financing (including preferred equity), development, and leasing of commercial and residential properties.
Describe your practice area and what it entails.
Anna: My practice primarily involves structuring and negotiating joint ventures and real estate financings, though historically I have worked on a broad range of commercial real estate matters, including acquisitions, dispositions, and leasing transactions. I work closely with clients from the initial planning stages to the final closing of their transactions and advise them with respect to the structuring and negotiation of these transactions.
Collin: As a Jones Day real estate attorney, my practice encompasses a broad spectrum of sophisticated commercial real estate matters with a particular focus on joint ventures, purchase and sale transactions, and leasing across all asset classes. I regularly represent institutional investors, developers, private equity funds, REITs, and other stakeholders in structuring, negotiating, and documenting complex transactions, including joint venture arrangements, such as those related to ground-up development projects, value-add investments, and stabilized assets.
What types of clients do you represent?
Anna: I represent financial institutions, real estate investors, real estate developers, real estate managers, real estate investment companies, and publicly traded companies. Some of the clients I have represented include CBRE, Grey-star, LaSalle Investment Management, Cloud Capital, Wells Fargo, and Blackstone.
Collin: I represent real estate investors, real estate funds, real estate developers, REITs, and publicly traded companies. Some of the clients I represent include Blackstone, Invitation Homes, Greystar, CBRE, TriGate Capital, and Mill Creek Residential.
What types of cases do you work on?
Anna: I work primarily on joint venture transactions, typically on the sponsor side, as well as real estate financing transactions. The deal sizes typically range from $50 million to more than $1 billion and include all asset classes, including multi-family, logistics, data centers, retail, hotel, and office.
Collin: My practice involves representing a combination of buyers and sellers of industrial, commercial, and multifamily and single-family residential properties across the United States (both single asset and portfolio transactions). I also represent sponsors and investors in joint venture agreements for all asset classes, including ground-up multifamily and single family residential projects that will have some combination of development joint ventures, development agreements, construction contracts, and property management agreements.
How did you choose this practice area?
Anna: I knew I was interested in being a transactional attorney early in law school and had always been interested in real estate. I liked that real estate was relevant to people in both a professional and personal sense, regardless of where they were in the world. The idea of working with others to achieve a common goal was also something that appealed to me. As a summer associate, I explored different practice areas but very much enjoyed the tangible aspect of the real estate practice and found it rewarding to see the physical results of the transactions I worked on (e.g., driving by a hotel that I helped a client purchase).
Collin: I was drawn to the collaboration with clients and the ability to help them acquire, sell, or develop a tangible asset. In addition, I knew the zero-sum game that is litigation was not meant for my personality, and I did not want to spend my career arguing motions and discovery requests.
What is a “typical” day like and/or what are some common tasks you perform?
Anna: Every day is different, which is something I really enjoy about being a real estate attorney. I am usually working on 10 to 20 different transactions that are in different stages at any given time. My days are often filled with calls and meetings with either clients to advise them on transaction strategies or the other side to negotiate transaction documents and coordinate closings. I also spend a significant amount of time working with our internal teams on everything from transaction documents to diligence matters. In addition, I consider mentoring junior attorneys and helping them grow both their substantive and soft skills to be a key part of my job.
Collin: A typical day involves responding to a lot of client emails, drafting contracts, and spending time with clients discussing the pressing issue of the day. Outside the real estate practice, I am actively involved with office-related matters, including business development and mentoring associates in Dallas.
What training, classes, experience, or skills development would you recommend to someone who wishes to enter your practice area?
Anna: While it is helpful to take Transactional classes in law school or to have had relevant work experience in the real estate industry, most of the training happens on the job, and most people do not have in-depth real estate knowledge coming out of law school. This is completely fine, but enthusiasm to learn, attention to detail, and great communication are skills that are critical to practicing real estate law (and law in general).
Collin: While in law school, I would take Federal Income Tax, Business Associations, and if possible, at least one Transactional class taught by a practicing attorney. Keep reading and educating yourself about the world and developing your soft skills, as they play an important role in being a successful transactional attorney. For example, managing your time is one of the most challenging aspects of practicing real estate law. You may be on 5 to 15 deals at once for different clients, and you need to manage your time so that each client feels as if their deal is the only deal you have.
What do you like best about your practice area?
Anna: I like that it is constantly evolving as the world and markets change. The changes of the past 10 years, including the expansion of AI and logistics, have required us to learn about new asset classes and adapt to meet the needs of our clients, which is challenging and fun. Jones Day continues to innovate to deliver the best possible client service. For example, the new energy transition and infrastructure practice leverages the diverse capabilities of the firm’s lawyers from different practice areas, including real estate, to provide cutting-edge advice in the energy space. This commitment to innovation allows us to be true partners with our clients and affords us the opportunity to be leaders in new and emerging fields.
Collin: The real estate practice comprises loans, corporate arrangements (e.g., joint ventures, separately managed accounts, and real estate funds), and buying and selling properties, leases, development, etc., which means that no two days are ever really the same and that you will never stop learning. Deal flow diversity and challenging transactions keep it exciting and new. The added benefit is that a lot of your clients, and even those on the other side of the deal, start to become your close friends as the real estate industry is very small and connected, and helping your friend close a deal is a lot of fun.
What are some typical tasks that a junior lawyer would perform in this practice area?
Anna: A junior lawyer on a real estate deal is the person who knows where everything is and where everything stands. They are responsible for tracking and reviewing diligence, updating a closing checklist, drafting initial documents, planning for closing logistics, and generally keeping the deal moving forward.
How do you see this practice area evolving in the future?
Anna: With the increasing popularity of AI and the resultant insatiable need for energy, the real estate world is merging with the infrastructure world as projects blend necessary skills and nuances from each area. We see this in the larger data center transactions that we are working on with respect to our asset work and financing work, and I think we will see this trend continue as time goes on.
How important is collaboration in effectively practicing real estate law?
Anna: Collaboration is critical. Deals can include many parties with competing timelines and priorities, and it is our job to act almost as an orchestra conductor to make sure everyone’s goals are aligned and tasks are delegated and handled efficiently. For example, a joint venture deal can include the client, several investors in the joint venture, their attorneys, a title company, a seller, their attorney, third parties who are conducting diligence (e.g., surveyors), and a lender and their attorney. Keeping the parties focused on the transaction and collaborating with them to move the transaction forward smoothly are key aspects of our job. Fortunately, the real estate practice group at Jones Day has a very diverse breadth of experience, and we operate seamlessly across offices, which gives us a unique ability to successfully handle even the most complex transactions requiring many different skill sets.
Collin: For long-term success, it is very important. The “real estate law” header is broad, and no one person can know everything in every real estate vertical so you must lean on your colleagues for their thoughts and to brainstorm concepts. Fortunately, Jones Day’s lack of an origination credit system allows natural collaboration as you do not have partners fighting over origination credits or operating under a “my client” mentality.
In addition, we approach the real estate group as a national practice vs. a series of individual real estate teams siloed in individual offices that operate independently from one another, which allows greater collaboration of ideas. From an associate’s perspective, this platform offers incredible opportunities to expand your skill set and learn from fantastic attorneys across Jones Day.
Jones Day embodies the quote “if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”