Energy and natural resources
The energy and natural resources sector is an important part of the legal landscape and is currently making more headlines than ever before. It covers, among other things, oil and gas projects, pipelines, refineries, liquefied natural gas, nuclear, renewables, and water and wastewater. Emerging energy initiatives such as biofuels and carbon capture and trading also feature. The key legal issues centre on the development and financing of projects, M&A, disputes and trading, and may be either domestic or international in scope. William Jones, a senior associate in RPC’s energy insurance practice, always wanted to be a spy. However, rather than embarking on a career in espionage following university, William focused on his other major passion: “I’d always been interested in the law. I chose the solicitor route rather than the Bar because I enjoy working in teams, dealing directly with commercial clients, and taking account of your clients’ commercial drivers. I also like taking a more holistic view of a commercial disagreement rather than looking at it in strictly legal terms.” Following his legal studies, William undertook a training contract at RPC. “I was looking for a firm that had a broad range of practice areas”, he remarks, “because as a law student it’s quite difficult to really know what you want to end up doing until you’ve done it. I wanted to go somewhere that offered me four very different seats and at the end feel confident that I was doing something that interested me and that I wanted a career in.” At the end of his training contract, William chose to specialise in the energy insurance field: “I was very much drawn in by the international nature of the work and the fact that, having a politics background, it had a political angle, and it was often contentious.”
Each day is different Coverage advice and litigation are the two main planks of William’s job. As he explains, the coverage side entails “advising insurance companies in respect of large energy and industrial claims, for example, if their insured has encountered a peril such as a hurricane, defective machinery or terror attack, and seeks to recover under their insurance policy. You’re advising insurers in those circumstances as to whether the insurance policy will respond to the claim. Occasionally, insurers and insureds have very different interpretations of a peril or a policy term and you end up in court.” I like having to become very knowledgeable about very niche issues very quickly William enjoys the litigation side of his job because “it’s multi-faceted, often involves ultra-high value claims of $100 million or more, the claims tend to be based overseas and subject to different law and jurisdiction, and you tend to have to take account of all sorts of geopolitical issues in the context of advising your clients. The international nature of the work presents opportunities to travel and work overseas. I have worked in RPC’s offices in both London and Singapore. When people read the word ‘insurance’, they tend to switch off, however, in this context it’s actually very interesting.” A recent case saw William working at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence (AI) and the law through the use of predictive coding. “In essence, it’s a computer programme that can be trained to understand relevance,” he explains. “You train the software to understand what documents are likely to be relevant within a large volume of material. It saves a huge amount of money
For more firms that work in this practice area, please use the “Training contract regional indexes” starting on p205.
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