Global PF lawyers busier than ever

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The world is complex and so is project finance law. While global affairs have limped throughout 2025 project finance deals have boomed and lawyers have been busier than ever, especially in the Americas. Many have been jumping boat in North America and AI has started gaining more traction. The LSEG legal survey for 2024/2025 includes data from 138 firms that have worked on 302 projects worth more than US$500m each. Those deals are part of the whopping US$381.8bn worth of project finance loans were signed globally in the first nine months of 2025, spread across 748 deals. The survey period runs from the start of October last year to the end of September. It is astounding to think that the teams involved in multibillion-dollar transactions are made of a handful of humans who work endless hours to push forward monster infrastructure and power scheme signings. The busiest global team through and through was once again Milbank, keeping their first spot for a second year in a row and claiming fame to 50 deals, rounding up their score from 48 total deals in last year’s legal survey. The silver medal among top global advisers goes to Latham & Watkins with 40 deals and the bronze goes to A&O Shearman with 37 deals. The two firms swapped places in the top podium this year as A&O Shearman came in second in 2024 with 39 global advisories while Latham scored 37 at the time. Milbank led the market across the pond as 45 of its 50 global deals were project financings in the Americas. The kings of the Asia Pacific project finance market were King & Wood Mallesons with nine advisories while Clifford Chance were the fastest runners in the EMEA race with 24 deals. The US remains the undisputed leader when it comes to multibillion-dollar deals and LNG retains its sector leadership position in project sizes as well as amount of projects. Out of the 10 biggest deals closed so far in 2025, nine are US-based and five are LNG. Third spot in global deals goes to a data cente multi-campus development in the US and an oil project in Guyana ranks eighth globally. Just after the top 10 comes an EMEA deal all the way from the Polish Baltic sea, where PGE and Orsted locked in a complex offshore wind financing. PFI interviewed Carina Radford, White & Case partner in London and a member of the firm's global executive committee, about the path ahead for project finance law. She discussed new players and structures when it comes to projects and deals as well as the introduction and evolution of artificial intelligence within the legal profession. EMEA teams like Radford's have been stretching their work with colleagues both east and west, working on teams calls with Americas and Asia Pacific in an increasingly global dealmaking environment. The post-pandemic element of dislocated teams has more recently been coupled with the additional technological advancement of AI. The rise of AI has naturally sparked much debate – from a legal and financial point of view, AI is mostly seen as a tool to help get deals across the line but also a major deal in itself that needs capital and advisory services to close. Power projects across both LNG and renewables are still top of the game but an increasing number of transactions is expected to flow into the market centred around data centres and cloud services. Speaking with several leading partners at leading law firms across Asia Pacific and the Americas, it emerged that new hiring waves are reshaping firms as activity grows. In the Americas there has been a healthy turnover as project finance dealflow increased, especially in North America. Both team and individual moves have been driven by several market themes including the race to secure expiring federal renewables tax credits, the explosion of digital infrastructure transactions, heavy activity in LNG, and even a renewed interest in nuclear construction. In terms of significant teams moves, Orrick hired three energy partners from A&O Sherman: Matthew Nesburn, Jeff Quinn-Cane and Charles Armbrust. Other multiple attorney moves came from A&O Shearman; Skadden; Bracewell; and Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton. In 2025 law firms operating in Latin America also increased their hiring of partners across project finance and energy practices to take advantage of improving financial stability in the region. While the legal turnover in the Americas is fuelled by a consistently busy market, there has been somewhat of a PF boom down under, which has caused talent worries. In Australia, the legal profession is enjoying a significant increase in PF deals and it could experience a shortfall in talent. This undersupply could be exacerbated by the hangover impacts of the pandemic, which has deferred overseas stints of the nation’s top lawyers as a new sector-wide trend emerges of lawyers embarking upon their rite-of-passage work trips abroad following multi-year lockdowns on international travel caused by Covid. In addition to Australia’s clean energy transition, developments include AI-driven rise of data centres, heightened demand for critical minerals created by US president Donald Trump’s tariffs and a resurgence in public-private partnerships.

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