Race for Rare Earth Minerals Propels Niche Big Law Practices

Big Law mining practices are straining to keep up with the surge of US critical minerals projects, as lawyers with specialized skills for the work are in short supply.

Mining work for a dozen years took about 30% of her time, said Meaghan Connors, a Houston-based banking and finance partner in Mayer Brown’s critical minerals group. The work began ramping up two years ago and now consumes 75% to 80% of her practice.

“It’s the busiest I’ve ever been,” Connors said. “I’m coming off a 430-hour month because of the demand and the fact these deals are moving so fast.” She expects to work on more than $12.2 billion of deals this year, up from nearly $2.2 billion last year.

Major law firms are chasing the surge in US critical and rare earths deals as President Donald Trump’s administration pumps billions of dollars into the industry. The goal is to break China’s grip on the raw materials for smartphones, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and military weapons.

Latham & Watkins represented Oklahoma-based USA Rare Earth Inc. in a planned $2.8 billion acquisition of Brazilian miner Serra Verde Group announced April 20—one of the largest transactions in the industry. Latham and White & Case advised USA Rare Earth on an agreement with the Commerce Department in January for $1.6 billion to accelerate production of rare-earth elements.

Latham, White & Case, Mayer Brown, and Bracewell LLP are among firms expanding US mining practices. They seek lawyers with oil and gas, financing, environmental and M&A experience to take on the growing workload.

“There’s been a fundamental acknowledgment of the fact that the US has not paid enough attention to this sector for over a generation,” said Rebecca Campbell, White & Case’s London-based global head of mining and metals. Clients from Japan and the Middle East are “looking much more actively” at investing in US projects, she said.

Firms Not Ready

The surge of interest in US critical minerals caught law firms unprepared, said Christopher Kulander, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas Law School.

“Mining law has significantly diminished within the legal community steadily for decades,” he said. “Suddenly we have this need because of rare earths and there’s not a lot of people that can do it.”

There’s demand for title lawyers to identify who owns mineral rights, finance lawyers to prepare lending agreements, and transactional lawyers for M&A and joint-ventures, said Kulander, who is also of counsel at Oliva Gibbs, an oil and gas law firm. Clients also need bankruptcy lawyers and litigators, he said.

Lawyers minimize the risk of lawsuits causing project delays, said Marek Locmelis, an associate professor in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. “In the US, everybody is suing everybody,” he said. “It’s one of the major drawbacks that is scaring away customers.”

Firms are searching for project development lawyers with a strong pedigree and three to seven years of experience, said Nicole Kennedy, a Houston-based principal at Principle Recruiting. The firms are offering top-scale salaries and signing bonuses to the most heavily-recruited candidates, she said.

“Every big firm in Texas is looking,” Kennedy said. There’s a limited pool of about 100 of the specialized lawyers in the state, however. And not all of them are looking for a new job, she said.

Dollars Flow

Trump has supercharged a mining push that began when President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.

In February, Trump’s administration launched Project Vault, a $12 billion public-private partnership to stockpile cobalt, gallium, and rare earths. The Defense Department last July bought $400 million in stock in MP Materials, which owns the only operational US rare earth mine at Mountain Pass, California. The Department of Energy has committed nearly $1 billion for mining efforts.

Mountain Pass rare earths mine.

Photographer: Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg

Bracewell lawyers are fielding questions from clients about permitting, land use rights and federal funding, said Jason Hutt, a Washington, DC partner who chairs the firm’s environment, lands and resources department.

“As this industry moves into the US on an increasing basis, we intend to capture a lot of that market share,” Hutt said.

Firms have tapped oil and gas lawyers to handle the uptick in projects. “My personal experience with over 20 years in the oil and gas space lends itself to the technical side” of mining, said Jason Rocha, a corporate partner in White & Case’s Houston office.

Critical minerals deals are similar to copper-related work with permitting and environmental issues, said Charles Carpenter, a Latham partner in Houston and New York. “We already have a deep bench,” he said. “A lot of those folks have done copper, coal, and other more common mining deals over the last 20 years.”

Texas Hotspot

Legal transactions in Texas have clustered around USA Rare Earth and its Round Top project outside El Paso. The deposit holds lithium and most of the 17 rare earth elements including neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. The elements are “the feedstock” for technologies ranging from EV motors to missile guidance systems, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jack Baxter.

USA Rare Earth and MP Materials “have enjoyed a lot of capital inflow,” he said. “They’re trying to establish a domestic supply chain with domestic pricing to try to reduce dependence on China.”

Mayer Brown’s Connors is among the few Texas lawyers who has been doing US mining work since 2010, when she joined the firm. Her experience in a niche practice gives her an edge in winning clients as more oil and gas lawyers use their skills to get into the hot market, she said.

“I clearly see that there’s new deals to be had,” Connors said. “With that will come a push by lawyers to get staffed on those deals, even if they’ve not traditionally been in the space.”