BigLaw sees opportunity to support trillion-dollar data centers
The recent proliferation of new trillion-dollar data centers is bringing big business to BigLaw firms. (Photo from Shutterstock)
The recent proliferation of new trillion-dollar data centers is bringing big business to BigLaw firms.
Bloomberg Law reports that 4,000 data centers are opening or have opened nationwide, providing lawyers with opportunities to assist with complex deals and partnerships. Bloomberg Law also reports that McKinsey & Company, a management consulting company, expects the cost of building and supporting these centers to reach $5.2 trillion by 2030.
“This is Silicon Valley meets New York,” Nader Mousavi, a Sullivan & Cromwell partner who has represented OpenAI in several deals involving data centers, reportedly said last fall. “Silicon Valley’s bread and butter has always been complicated, technology-driven investment. And it’s now happening at an unprecedented scale that requires high degrees of creativity and sophistication across diverse practices.”
Bloomberg Law uncovered several examples of what this work looks like inside BigLaw firms.
As one example, Latham & Watkins, Kirkland & Ellis, Milbank, Clifford Chance and several other law firms designed a complex joint venture structure for a $28 billion data center cluster owned by Meta in Louisiana. According to Bloomberg Law, the structure for the project, known as Hyperion, keeps the debt off Meta’s books and could provide a model for future deals.
In another, Husch Blackwell serves as local counsel for Microsoft as it works to develop a 315-acre data center called Fairwater in Wisconsin. The firm handled several tasks, including navigating zoning laws and land-use regulations, negotiating tax incentives, and handling title and survey issues, Bloomberg Law reports. The firm is also helping Microsoft expand the project.
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