Trainee blog - Letitia Longworth

Letitia is one of our trainee bloggers from Brodies LLP. Originally from York, Letitia obtained her first degree in English from the University of St Andrews, before moving to Edinburgh for the LLB and Diploma. She spent her first seat with the firm’s energy & infrastructure team, and has recently joined the personal and family department in Edinburgh.

Energy & Infrastructure – a transactional seat with a twist

In early April, Brodies’ first-year trainees put the finishing touches to their handover notes; cleared their drawers of mugs, notepads and half-finished boxes of tea; and decamped en masse to their new departments.

Throughout my first seat in energy & infrastructure (E&I), I sat within the firm’s corporate & commercial department, which advises corporate clients on the legal aspects of their commercial deals. While E&I is, therefore, a transactional seat, it’s more industry-focused than the rest of the corporate department, and provides a lot of opportunity to develop your knowledge of clients’ businesses as well as their legal needs. With the dust from the great seat migration now settled, I thought I’d give a more detailed summary of the role of a trainee within the team.

Renewables

The majority of the corporate work in E&I relates to the sale or purchase of renewable energy projects. Take windfarms as an example: the team will often review and negotiate contracts for the supply and maintenance of turbines, which are supplementary to the underlying transaction – usually the transfer of ownership in the company that owns the rights to develop the land.

So, in addition to technology-specific contracts, each transaction requires a host of corporate documents (such as board minutes and Companies House forms) to be drafted and signed before the deal can complete. Often it will be the trainee who puts these together – great for your drafting and time-management skills.

Non-contentious construction

Brodies’ non-contentious construction team sits within E&I, so trainees in this seat also get a good deal of exposure to construction contracts and the numerous consultant appointments and collateral warranties that go with them. I helped to draft warranties, and kept a close eye on the dozens of executed copies as they were gradually returned.

For any trainee coming into the seat, it’s a chance to exercise some autonomy, to manage your own workload and to build relationships with signatories and solicitors on the other side.

Regulatory work

A particularly interesting – and, for me, unexpected – aspect of E&I was the number of public law and regulatory issues that come up in the course of a day’s work. Whether it’s proposed changes to renewables subsidies, or a tricky question relating to planning permission, there’s a steady flow of wider regulatory advice that runs alongside the corporate tasks.

If you’ve got an interest in this area of the law, it’s a good chance to build up your research skills, and to practise picking the commercial implications out of (occasionally fairly dry!) legislation.

Completion kicks

As each transaction nears completion, client calls and meetings become more frequent and documents that have been in draft form for months are finalised and signed. It’s a fast-paced time and, for the trainee, there’s always scope for involvement. You can support the team in several ways, from witnessing signatures during the completion meeting to simply being familiar with the documents, so that you can move your clients onto the next contract when there’s a lull in activity.

The aftermath is a further opportunity, with the stacks of paperwork that are often leftover, and solicitors for all parties requesting copies and counterparts ASAP. It’s hard to overstate the value of good organisational skills and a cool head!

My eight months in E&I were varied and interesting. If you’re keen to get your teeth into transactional work but like the sound of a more specialised focus, then a projects or energy seat might be just the thing for you.