McGuireWoods was shortlisted in two award categories in Financial Times’ 2023 North America Innovative Lawyers Report, earning honors for advising clients in transformational energy and economic development projects.
FT’s annual report spotlights pioneering work by law firms, in-house legal teams and individuals. Winners will be announced at a Dec. 4 awards ceremony in New York.
McGuireWoods was shortlisted in the “Innovative Lawyers in Energy Transition” category for helping Dominion Energy Virginia secure approvals for the nation’s largest offshore wind energy project. Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project will be the first installed in federal waters and the first owned by an electric utility.
McGuireWoods and its public affairs arm, McGuireWoods Consulting, assisted Dominion Energy in all aspects of the landmark project, including legislative consulting, securing key regulatory approvals, and executing construction and equipment contracts with global suppliers in a volatile economy. The project is expected to generate enough clean energy to power up to 660,000 homes while avoiding or displacing as much as 5 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually.
M&A partners Patrick Horne, Samuel Kettering and Jude Leblanc led the McGuireWoods team negotiating construction and equipment contracts that contain important protections for Dominion Energy and its customers. They were supported by counsel Najwan Nayef and associates Chris Alderman and Emily Blair.
Regulatory partners Joseph K. Reid III and Vishwa Link assisted the company in securing regulatory approvals from the Virginia State Corporation Commission. They were supported by counsel Jennifer Dvorak Valaika and associates Timothy Patterson and Benjamin Shute.
The firm also was shortlisted in FT’s “Innovative Lawyers in Deals and Financing” category for its work creating an “innovation district” for George Mason University to support Amazon’s second headquarters in Northern Virginia. McGuireWoods was selected as special counsel to devise a public-private partnership for development of George Mason’s Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA), which helped attract Amazon’s HQ2 to Northern Virginia.
McGuireWoods partners Edmund S. Pittman and George Keith Martin led the team that created the complex and creative development agreements enabling the IDIA project to proceed. The university plans to graduate an additional 7,500 computer science and engineering students over the next 20 years thanks to the development.
To compile the North America Innovative Lawyers report, FT and research partner RSGi evaluated submissions from law firms, legal services providers and in-house legal teams and conducted interviews with clients, lawyers, executives and experts.