Kirkland has officially launched an environmental transactional practice group in Houston led by partner Paul Tanaka, the firm recently announced.
The first Kirkland environmental partner to be licensed to practice in Texas, Tanaka also offices in San Francisco. He leads a team in Houston that includes associates James Dolphin and Devi Chandrasekaran, who joined the firm in April and July, respectively.
Tanaka calls Dolphin and Chandrasekaran “extremely valuable additions” who are “critical to the foundation” of the firm’s environmental practice in Houston. Firmwide, Kirkland’s environmental transactional lawyers have advised on hundreds of major transactions in the energy sector, according to the firm’s announcement.
“We are actively recruiting summer associates and laterals, and anticipate that additional attorneys from firm offices will become licensed in Texas to support our growth here,” Tanaka says.
“As the firm’s Houston office grows, so will our practice group in Texas given the critical importance of environmental issues in energy transactions.”
Two of the most important topics related to environmental transactions affecting Kirkland’s Texas-based clients, Tanaka says, are the growth and development of environmental regulations affecting the energy industry and the allocation of environmental risks associated with these issues among transactional parties.
Dolphin notes the firm’s transactional clients are increasingly utilizing pollution legal liability or rep & warranty insurance to manage environmental risks.
“These insurance products can be useful in bridging the gap between the allocation of environmental risk in transactions and getting deals done,” he says.
Chandrasekaran, who has developed an expertise in the Clean Air Act, points to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) due diligence as an area that more investors and clients have become interested in to satisfy co-parties and other investors over the past few years.
“This ESG due diligence can be broader in scope than traditional environmental due diligence and should be planned for at the start of a deal,” she says.
In the past year, Dolphin advised on environmental aspects of an in-court restructuring of a power generation subsidiary of NRG, which included an environmental review of its fleet of power plants and preparation of environmental-related bankruptcy court filings.
The Emory University School of Law graduate adds that the firm’s clients have been active in the acquisition of upstream oil and gas assets in Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota.
“These transactions are exciting from an environmental perspective and we are often integrally involved a variety of transaction aspects, including negotiating the purchase and sale agreement, coordinating with environmental consultants, and conducting due diligence assessments,” he says.
Though she only joined Kirkland a few weeks ago from Baker Botts, Chandrasekaran has already jumped in on a number of environmental transactions the firm’s busy Houston office is working on.
For example, Chandrasekaran is involved in post-closing work related to the $2.17 billion acquisition by affiliates of The Blackstone Group and ArcLight Capital Partners of four Midwest power plants from American Electric Power.