Texas Nuclear Push Sparks Legal Gold Rush for Specialized Firms

Texas’ big bet on nuclear power promises to accelerate demand for a small group of law firms that have built up specialized practice areas to handle the work.

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, which boasts one of the largest nuclear practices in the US with more than 70 lawyers in Houston and Austin, will hit “growth mode in the next six to 12 months, due to the nuclear activity in Texas,” team leader Jeffrey Merrifield said in an interview.

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, which worked on the last two nuclear power plants built in Texas, is optimistic about landing work in upcoming projects because of the expertise the firm has built, said Tim Matthews, a partner in the Washington, DC office. The firm has about two dozen partners in Houston, Dallas, and Washington set to handle nuclear work, he said.

The law firms have a good reason to be optimistic. After years of taking on work tied to the leftovers of a past nuclear boom—disposing of waste and decommissioning and selling reactors—they now see themselves helping to create new power generation.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has called for a “nuclear renaissance” in the state after signing House Bill 14 into law in June 2025 to establish the Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Office and create a $350 million fund to streamline nuclear development. Companies are heeding the call, as Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. are among those planning to use nuclear energy to power artificial intelligence data centers in the state.

The revival of nuclear has been promised numerous times since the heydey of nuclear power plants in the 1960s. Those efforts didn’t pan out, in large part after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 which led to stricter changes in nuclear safety regulations, and safety concerns highlighted by 2011 earthquakes and tsunamis that hit Japanese power plants. Investors shied away from putting expensive nuclear proposals through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews, but now see opportunities the Trump administration’s orders to push through new reactor licenses.

Fermi Inc. has signed deals to begin production of four nuclear-power reactors for a private data center grid campus in the Texas Panhandle. Last Energy Inc., a nuclear startup in Austin, announced plans last month to test its pilot microreactor on the Texas A&M University campus.

“Texas,” said Merrifield, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission appointee, “is certainly a leading state in considering the deployment of new nuclear generation.”

Niche Area

A small group of law firms with a Texas presence that specialize in handling nuclear matters—a mix of Big Law and boutique operations—are positioning themselves to try to win the new work. Along with Pillsbury and Morgan Lewis, firms that tout their expertise include Sidley Austin, Hunton Andrews Kurth, and Holland & Knight.

“To have lawyers who are experienced and seasoned,” Morgan Lewis’ Matthews said, “that gives us a leg up.”

Douglass Robison, founder of Natura Resources, said he sought out “nationally-ranked law firms with nuclear experience” when he needed help starting his company and building an advanced nuclear reactor at Abilene Christian University. He hired lawyers from King & Spalding, Morgan Lewis, and Pillsbury.

Law firms helped build the nuclear demand. Pillsburyand Morgan Lewis are founding members of the Texas Nuclear Alliance, an industry association created in 2022 after Winter Storm Uri. The alliance advocated for the state legislature in 2023 to approve the low-interest loan program dubbed the Texas Energy Fund to encourage companies to build more infrastructure such as natural gas plants and nuclear power. The alliance applauded the passage of House Bill 14 this year as a milestone.

Now, Texas “is ready on all fronts” to become the top nuclear generator in the US, said David Staack, deputy vice chancellor for research at Texas A&M’s engineering school. Robison said, “We’re building this industry almost from the ground up.”

Getting Work

In March, chemical maker Dow Inc. and X-Energy LLC, an advanced nuclear technology company backed by Amazon, applied for a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a small reactor at Dow’s Seadrift facility in Calhoun County on the Gulf Coast.

Lawyers from Sargent & Lundy, which has a Houston office, worked with X-energy on the pre-application for three years for “site selection, site feasibility, site characterization and developing the necessary environmental report,” the firm said in a statement.

Sidley Austin is among the law firms that considers itself as having an inside track on getting new work. In 2023, the firm represented Constellation Energy Corp. in the $1.75 billion acquisition of NRG Energy Inc.’s 44% interest in the South Texas nuclear power plant.

Still, determining how much future business law firms can count on from the nuclear resurgence “is really complicated,” said Robert Stephens, a Sidley partner in the firm’s Houston office. The business will depend on how much power AI data centers will need in a decade, he said.

“How is that demand going to look in 10-plus years?” Stephens said. “It’s not a market you can be completely certain on.”