Big Law Tax Experts Brace for Brutal July 4 Wind, Solar Crunch

Welcome back to the Big Law Business column. I’m Roy Strom, and today we look at tax lawyers in the clean energy space. Sign up for Business & Practice, a free morning newsletter from Bloomberg Law.

In one important respect, the US tax code—not heavy machinery operators—determines when wind or solar energy plants officially begin construction.

That quirk has a small group of Big Law tax specialists under pressure. Solar and wind energy developers face a July 4 deadline to begin construction if they want Biden-era tax credits that can make or break the business model of many of the projects.

Artificial intelligence’s crushing demand for energy exacerbates the situation. Big Law’s renewable energy tax lawyers are running ragged toward Independence Day—all while fending off poachers seeking a piece of one of the hottest practices in the legal industry.

“It has been exhausting,” said Keith Martin, a Norton Rose Fulbright partner. “We feel like doctors with overcrowded waiting rooms.”

The tax specialists have been working overtime since Congress approved the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. The law ushered in a new tax credit system to help spur record investments in renewable energy.

Donald Trump then rewrote the rules when he signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on July 4, 2025. The law largely phased out tax credits for wind and solar projects through the “begin construction” deadline of July 4, 2026.

Tax lawyers give clients their determination of when a developer’s actions meet the legal definition of breaking ground. Excavators moving dirt to prepare a site for construction may not count; but digging a hole for a project’s foundation likely does count, said Adam Kobos, a tax energy partner at Troutman Pepper Locke.

“You have tax lawyers making these very, very fine distinctions around what it means to begin construction,” he said. “It’s strange and somewhat amazing how much time is spent on just that issue.”

Beginning construction can also mean spending 5% of the project’s total cost, or custom ordering a major part, such as a transformer. Developers that miss the deadline have only a year and a half to complete their project and still qualify for credits that can amount to 30% to 50% of the investment, said Derrick Flakoll, an analyst at BloombergNEF.

That accelerated timeline is “unrealistic,” Flakoll said. “It’s extremely important to the viability of these projects that they can get ready in time.”

The deadline isn’t the only thing driving demand for these lawyers’ time. There is a whole new group of clients to satisfy. Corporate taxpayers can now buy tax credits generated from completed renewable energy developments as a result of the IRA.

A new workstream has spun up with the rise of tax credit insurance, which protects the purchasers of the credits from the risk that the Internal Revenue Service deems they were granted improperly.

Since the beginning of the year, lawyers must also certify that projects meet new, strict limits on where their products are sourced. So-called “foreign entities of concern,” or FEOC, limits are an effort to move the US renewables sector away from Chinese equipment.

“Every tax lawyer is carrying around the FEOC statute and has practically memorized it,” Norton Rose’s Martin said. “My own copy is so dog-eared at this point that I’m just shocked the pages are still together.”

‘Not Sustainable’

The huge demand for AI means that data center developers are willing to spend money to complete projects as quickly as possible.

John Eliason, who co-leads Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe’s energy & infrastructure sector, said his firm won data center work by leveraging energy and infrastructure lawyers in its offices around the globe. This wasn’t because clients wanted local expertise—it was because they wanted people working wherever the sun was shining.

“I worry about how busy team members can be,” Eliason said. “Because it’s not sustainable for a long time.”

Clients running into a scarcity of talent are calling Clean Energy Counsel, a boutique firm that competes with Big Law. The firm has hired associates from some of the bigger renewable energy tax groups.

“There is a very limited pool of the kinds of sophisticated tax counsel that can do this work,” said Zach Crowley, a partner at Clean Energy. “We are getting interest from clients who may have historically spoken to some of those larger firms.”

Recruiters are circling. Firms that have hired tax energy partners this year include Paul Weiss, Wilson Sonsini, McDermott Will & Schulte, and McGuireWoods.

Since 2024, 55 tax-energy specialists have made lateral moves, according to data from recruiting firm Sartori & Partners. That is amid a talent pool so thin that Big Law firms are starting to hire from insurers and in-house counsel—exemplified by the McGuireWoods and Wilson Sonsini hires, said Lorenzo Sartori, managing partner at the recruiting firm.

“It becomes a game of musical chairs,” Sartori said. “Someone is always left without a seat.”

Vinson & Elkins expanded its group in 2024 by hiring Jenny Speck, bringing the practice to four partners, one of the largest. Speck and partner Lauren Collins said their team has mostly kept associates despite competitors’ calls.

As busy as they are, Collins and Speck said they won’t be working on the deadline day, July 4. The US holiday falls on a Saturday.

But the duo will be back to work the following Monday, Collins said. Tax credits generated by the projects launched by next month will continue to finance deals through the early 2030s.

“It is not like there will be a reprieve,” she said.

Worth Your Time

On Cyber Attacks: Lewis Brisbois ordered remote workers back to offices after a cyberattack prompted it to block outside access to internal networks, Justin Henry reports.

On Dallas Lawyers: An acclaimed Texas trial lawyer with a long record of supporting Democratic candidates is charging half his hourly rate to help Dallas thwart Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s push for guns in more public spaces, Ryan Autullo reports.

On Skadden: Skadden added three partners in its investment management practice, bolstering capabilities in guiding global asset managers, sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors and fund sponsors and managers, Mahira Dayal reports.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading and please send me your thoughts, critiques, and tips.