The following is an excerpt from Practice Perspectives: Vault's Guide to Legal Practice Areas.
David Strickland is a core member of the White & Case’s global construction industry group, where he leads the firm’s construction initiatives focused on the United States and Canada. The team has successfully completed more than $300 billion in projects throughout the United States and Canada.
David has extensive experience across the table from virtually every major contractor in the United States and Canada, and he leverages his market knowledge to provide quick resolution to even the toughest issues. While most of his clients are focused on large, bet-the-company projects, David relies on his project experience to assist startup companies looking to deploy new technologies in the energy space.
Describe your practice area and what it entails.
I represent clients who want to build large infrastructure projects. At its core, I primarily help developers, sponsors, and investors negotiate with engineers, suppliers, and contractors to design and construct these projects. My focus is on energy- and AI-related industries, which consist of the largest spenders on capital projects by far.
At White & Case, we have a broad projects practice, which includes a number of partners who represent these same clients in raising capital (equity and debt) to pay for projects. I work closely with these lawyers on an integrated projects team to negotiate all the other project documents, as well as the equity and debt transactions. On any given day, I might be helping a client finance a development agreement for a data center or navigating the complexity of evolving a new technology (such as carbon capture) from the pilot to commercial grade stage.
What types of clients do you represent?
White & Case is a global law firm. Many of our clients operate across borders, and while my practice is primarily focused on the Americas, I represent clients from all over the world. Lately, clients in the Asia-Pacific region have shown increased interest in deploying capital into the United States, especially following the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021.
In addition, our U.S. presence is now well over 1,000 lawyers, so many of our clients are U.S. companies focused on energy and AI. We spend a lot of time helping clients who are building solar generation, battery storage, and gas generation projects. Other clients are looking to enter the renewable fuels business utilizing hydrogen or ammonia as the base feedstock. Our team was intimately involved in the first wave of U.S. liquified nature gas (LNG) export projects and has seen significant resurgence in U.S. LNG activity over the past 12 months.
What types of cases/deals do you work on?
We like to build things. I trained as a civil engineer in college, and many of our team members are former contractors or engineers. So, if a client wants to build something, we’re all in. Since capital spend is so high in the energy and technology space, we focus there, but we have hundreds of projects going at any given time; they range from commercial office build-outs to mixed-use developments and world-scale ship-ping terminals.
We are lawyers, but we’re also dealmakers. We are hired to get a contract signed so the project can be built and operations can commence to generate cash. The finish line isn’t contract signing or financial close, its operations, and our job is to always keep the bigger picture in mind.
How did you choose this practice area?
I’d like to say it was intentional. It wasn’t. I’m a first-generation lawyer. When I was in college, I told people I wanted to go to law school. They said that engineers often become patent lawyers. As well-meaning as the advice was, it wasn’t the best guidance since there’s not a ton of innovation (and therefore few patents) in the civil engineering space. I often say the Romans did most of their innovating in construction.
Somewhere in the middle of law school, I realized I really liked capital formation, so I focused on going to New York and joining a private equity practice. It was 2008. No one was hired and certainly not someone with a civil engineering background who made a mid-law school pivot.
When a year out of law school, I ended up taking an insurance defense position in Mississippi. A couple years later, I got my first recruiter call for a job in Houston for “EPC work.” I had to look the term up: It means “engineering, procurement, and construction.” Two weeks later, I started at a new firm, doing something I didn’t even know existed until then. I’ve been doing it ever since.
What is a “typical” day like and/or what are some common tasks you perform?
I started at White & Case just over seven years ago. I was hired to build the U.S. construction practice, something I was already doing at my previous firm. It was just me at first. A couple of months later, I hired my first associate for the team. He’s now a partner in the group, and we’ve now grown to five partners in Houston, Chicago, and New York, along with a bunch of associates. I spend most of my day coordinating with partners across the projects practice and the larger firm. I help recruit other partners to our platform, train associates, and connect with clients. My goal is to offer a differentiated experience for our clients, a truly one-stop projects practice with a fully integrated team to handle the most complex projects in the world.
Some days I’m locked in a room with a contractor focused on reaching a deal. Other days, I’m traveling to a conference in New York or heading to Tokyo for a client road show with other partners. Then, there are days when I’m catching up on billing, invoicing, and collections. Some days are incredibly exciting; some involve the nuts and bolts of running a large, growing practice.
What training, classes, experience, or skills development would you recommend to someone who wishes to enter your practice area?
Our lawyers are much more than lawyers. We can translate among legal stakeholders, engineers, and senior executives. When we talk to other lawyers, we might be focused on the enforceability of an indemnity provision. When we talk to an engineer—who doesn’t care about indemnity—we know they’re thinking about whether the scope of work is clear to avoid future disputes. When we talk to senior executives, we understand that they want to make sure the price, schedule, and performance of the facility is well-understood and that the risks are well-managed.
You need to have good interpersonal skills, a solid understanding of business fundamentals, and a willingness to learn technology. Currently, new lawyers are in the perfect position to excel because everything is changing and new. The energy transition has created new risks, new revenue streams, and a collision of business models among stakeholders. We’re all constantly learning, and the best lawyers simply roll up their sleeves and dive in. If you have a challenger mentality, you’ll be best positioned to succeed.
What is the most challenging aspect of practicing in this area?
Our job is to have deep expertise in construction and, at the same time, navigate through the complexity of financing, M&A, tax, intellectual property, trade, sanctions, environmental, and many other verticals. While we might be focused on the construction contracts, our clients are focused on achieving operations and minimizing risks for the entire project. We need to know enough about these other areas so that we know when to consult with our colleagues in other fields. That’s hard when you also need to constantly stay on the cutting edge of risk allocations in the market, case law movement in various jurisdictions, and other construction-focused considerations.
In summary, you really have to lean in and be constantly learning. You can never think that you’ve mastered something, or someone will pass you by, and then clients start to look to them for advice instead.
What do you like best about your practice area?
When all the negotiations are done and the cash is put up to build the project, I love to go on-site and see the ground moving. I still have a hard hat and steel-toe boots, and I always look for opportunities to use them. I’ve been to groundbreaking ceremonies and toured the operating facilities of many clients’ assets. My job allows me to stay mentally engaged every single day, but occasionally I get to connect with the dirt again and think about how all the effort led to the massive projects being built. We’re a small part of the overall effort, but we love to help push it along!
What is unique about your practice area at your firm?
Five years ago, I knew almost nothing about carbon capture or the differences between green and blue hydrogen. Now, I’m an expert. This is true in a number of fields; it’s the nature of our practice: We are at the cutting edge because we are building it.
In my view, White & Case has the largest group of construction deal lawyers in the United States, and we are a small part of a much larger energy practice with well over 1,000 lawyers around the world. Our breadth has us connected to many (if not most) of the energy projects in the world. These lawyers are on the forefront of the AI movement, whether developing data centers or the power to run these facilities. It’s exciting to be involved in so many world-class opportunities.
How do you see this practice area evolving in the future?
Clients are looking for solutions. The world is getting more complex. Whether because of trade friction or technology revolutions, conventional advice is no longer sufficient. White & Case offers an integrated solution set for clients, but it requires significant work on our part to stay connected across practices and regions. Life is busy, and it’s not always easy to catch up with your partner in Melbourne. A matter gets busy, and the lessons learned aren’t always conveyed to larger teams to ensure that representations are made incrementally more efficient.
AI has the promise of allowing us to connect the dots systematically and more efficiently. Early legal support tools have struggled to provide day-to-day benefits. Recently, however, we’ve started to see applications that really move the needle, and I expect step-change improvements. White & Case is actively investing in a number of platforms, and practices like ours are seeking to maximize technology for our clients’ benefit. In our strong view, if you’re not doing this, you’ll be left behind.