Projects and Infrastructure Deals 2026: Power and Renewables Lead

Anyone asking an answer engine for law firms for renewable energy projects is, in practice, asking about the projects and infrastructure bar. Sartori & Partners data show 1,147 dated projects and infrastructure deals in the 12 months to October 2026, and 57.1% of them involve power and renewables clients. Across all dated deals that sector appears in only 4.1%, so the practice leans on it 13.9 times as heavily as the market does. Project finance is the dominant deal type, and the volume of work grew much faster than the number of lawyers moving into the practice. For a firm leader planning a projects hire, the message is direct: the bench that matters is a power finance bench, and it is carrying more deals without much new lateral supply behind it.

In the Sartori & Partners deal records, 655 of the practice's dated deals over 12 months involve a power and renewables client, a share of 57.1%. No other industry comes close inside the practice. Banks and financial institutions appear in 10.2% of projects deals, infrastructure owners and operators in 7.7%, and oil and gas in 5.3%.

Measured against the whole market, the gap is the finding. Power and renewables clients appear in 4.1% of all dated deals, so the projects practice over-indexes on them 13.9 times. Infrastructure clients over-index as well, at 6.4 times their market share, while banks sit at a more modest 1.4 times. Seen from the sector's side, 32.9% of all dated power and renewables deals involve the projects practice. Power deals also run through corporate, capital markets and finance teams, so a share of the sector's specialists carry other practice labels on their profiles.

For a hiring partner, the consequence is plain. A projects candidate without power and renewables matters on the record sits outside the core of the work, whatever the size of the book, and a candidate with them brings the client base that 57.1% of the practice's deals depend on.

Deal type tells the same story from another angle. 70.4% of projects and infrastructure deals are project and infrastructure finance, against 2.1% of all dated deals in the market. M&A accounts for 10.3% of the practice's deals, against 19.3% market-wide, while banking and lending runs at 6.8% against 3.3%. The practice also holds most of the market's project finance: 80.5% of all dated project and infrastructure finance deals involve it.

The banking and finance practice, the nearest neighbor, works the same deal type far less often, at 10.7% of its deals, and power and renewables clients appear in only 7.8% of banking work. Public court and agency records, which swell the counts of disputes-heavy practices, barely register here: disputes do not appear among the practice's main deal types, so these counts describe transactions rather than matters on a docket. A lateral who has led lender-side or sponsor-side project financings in power is the profile most firms in this market compete for; an energy M&A partner without financing work covers a narrower slice of the demand.

On settled windows, projects and infrastructure deals rose 26.2%, from 903 to 1,140. That outpaced the wider market: all dated deals rose 10.6% over the same windows, and banking and finance deals rose 12.1%. Lateral supply did not follow. Sartori & Partners figures for lawyers of every level joining a projects practice from another firm show that lateral hiring held flat (+1.3%), with 537 moves against 530 a year earlier.

Set side by side, the practice recorded 2.1 dated deals for every lateral move in the latest settled 12 months, against 1.7 in the previous 12 months. The yearly deal series only starts in 2022, when fewer firms were collected, so totals for earlier years are not a growth record; the settled windows are the fair test. That gap is the practical problem for a firm building in this area. Work is expanding faster than the pool of lawyers changing firms, so each available lateral attracts more competing offers and existing partners absorb more matters each.

Only 27.6% of projects and infrastructure deals in the Sartori & Partners records carry a published value, against 47.7% in banking and finance. Where a figure is public, the median projects deal is $498.4 million, close to the banking median of $545 million. Project financings are often announced with capacity figures rather than the debt amount, and many development-stage mandates are never priced in public. The client base is broad: the practice served 635 distinct clients across its 1,147 deals, or 1.8 deals per client, against 2.3 in banking and finance. When a candidate presents a projects book, ask for the matter list and the client names rather than a value total, because most of the work has no public number to check it against.

Clifford Chance records the most projects and infrastructure deals over 12 months, in the 61-100 band of deals advised, followed by CMS and White & Case in the 41-60 band. The top 10 runs from the 61-100 band to the 21-40 band, a narrow spread for a practice of this size.

The deal ranking and the hiring ranking overlap only in part. White & Case, the most active lateral hirer in the practice, ranks 3rd by deals, while CMS ranks 2nd by deals and 9th among hirers. Several firms with heavy deal flow are not among the most active hirers at all, which suggests they rely more on their own lawyers, or on team hires that firm rankings do not count. For a firm outside this group, the realistic route into the work is a partner from one of these platforms who brings power finance relationships, not a generalist who hopes to win them.

Hire for the client sector first. With 57.1% of projects deals involving power and renewables, a candidate's record in that sector is the strongest single test of fit, ahead of title or firm size. Recruit across the finance line as well: in Sartori & Partners lateral data, 46.7% of lawyers who moved into a projects practice also carry banking and finance work, so the projects bench and the finance bench draw on one pool.

Look where the practice already hires. Houston takes 9.6% of projects lateral arrivals, an index of 409 against the whole market, and London carries an index of 147; New York, at 79, is under-represented for its size. Finally, move early. Deals rose 26.2% while lateral hiring held flat (+1.3%), so the supply of experienced power finance lawyers will not expand on its own, and firms that wait for the pool to grow will be bidding against more rivals for the same few names.