Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The FT’s Innovative Lawyers awards celebrate law firm practitioners who go the extra mile. And all those featured here have done so to achieve breakthroughs in the practice of law. They excel in varying fields — from artificial intelligence to intellectual property and data privacy — but all have demonstrated impact and leadership.Orrick’s Teresa Hill stood out to the judges for her long-standing, far-sighted work on new kinds of clean energy deals. As well as helping tech companies with their soaring demands for power, her initiatives show the way forward for a just energy transition. And, Hill points out, her family connections to coal-fired plant workers and loggers means she has a personal insight into the importance of ensuring a fair deal for local communities. Profiles compiled and edited by RSGI researchers and FT editors. “Winner” indicates an Innovative Lawyers 2024 award; the rest are in alphabetical order.WINNER: Teresa HillPartner, OrrickTeresa Hill supports big corporate clients in achieving their sustainability, climate and renewable energy goals. Her work has a particular emphasis on negotiating renewable energy power purchase agreements (PPAs) to help clients meet their net zero carbon commitments.She has worked with some of the world’s largest corporate buyers of renewable energy, such as Microsoft, helping them to expand their global portfolios of renewable and low-carbon energy supplies. This year, she helped structure Microsoft’s deal with Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management, in which the tech giant backed $10bn-worth of renewable energy projects. She has also helped pioneer PPAs tied to providing benefits to disadvantaged groups.Hill, who joined Orrick in 2022, is also a board member of the Clean Energy Buyers Association, which encourages an expansion of clean power supplies in the US.Alex BerengautPartner, Covington & Burling Alex Berengaut focuses on constitutional disputes in the digital age. He advised Chinese-owned TikTok in its case this year against a federal law that will ban the video-sharing app across the US if its parent company, ByteDance, does not divest its operation in the country by January 19. TikTok had argued that the law is unconstitutional. However, last week a US appeals court upheld the law.He helped TikTok to block Montana’s proposed statewide ban in 2023 by arguing First Amendment protections.Berengaut typically specialises in cases where corporate rights clash with national security concerns. He helped Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi overturn a US financing ban in 2021.He also represented Microsoft in a dispute over a search warrant for data stored in Ireland. In 2018, this contributed to the creation of the Cloud Act for cross-border data requests.Cynthia ColePartner, Baker McKenzieCynthia Cole leads a team in Silicon Valley that specialises in technology transactions and data privacy. In this work, she uses the lessons she learned as in-house counsel and chief executive at a tech company to advise clients on licensing, takeovers, and other decisions.On moving into private practice after working in-house for 13 years, she identified an opportunity to offer specialised data privacy expertise that would help clients in their due diligence work and business expansion.Since joining Baker McKenzie from Baker Botts in San Francisco in 2022, she has been involved in the firm’s testing and adoption of generative AI and has also provided advice to clients on how best to adopt the technology faster, while minimising legal risks.Cole also works with industry groups to promote the number of women on corporate boards and to connect women working in technology and law.Andy GassPartner, Latham & Watkins Andy Gass has emerged as one of the most sought-after experts in intellectual property and antitrust law, by acting as counsel and strategic adviser to major US generative AI ventures. He has defended OpenAI in litigation that accused its ChatGPT service of large-scale copyright infringement. And his other leading clients include Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, and Microsoft.Early work identifying the likely legal challenges facing clients in the AI field has established Latham & Watkins as a “destination firm” for defending and solving disputes, he says. He claims an enviable record in what he describes as the sometimes inevitable “early skirmishes in these bet-the-industry cases”. But he also advises clients on developing partnerships to avoid litigation.Gass, who teaches copyright law at University of California, Berkeley, is now advising his firm on its internal adoption of generative Al.Alison GroundsPartner, Troutman Pepper Hamilton SandersAlison Grounds is founder and managing partner of Troutman Pepper eMerge, a subsidiary of the firm, which provides end-to-end integrated discovery services for legal matters.She launched the venture in 2012 — at what was then Troutman Sanders — when, in her work as an intellectual property litigator, she identified a need for in-house expertise that would be focused on ediscovery and data management.The team now boasts 80 lawyers, analysts and technologists developing new tools that improve consistency and efficiency. In the past year, they have sought to apply new software with generative AI features to help less technically proficient staff to undertake document review.Grounds spends much of her time speaking to industry groups and advises her firm’s practice areas on how best to deploy document review tools.Christina HioureasPartner, Foley HoagChristina Hioureas’s practice group specialises in representing poorer countries and individuals on matters before the UN and its bodies. She is also often appointed as an arbitrator in international disputes.Her UN practice selects work that promotes the rule of international law and human rights. She is co-chair of the firm’s international litigation and arbitration department, as well, which acts as counsel to more than 60 sovereign states and state-owned enterprises in international disputes.Her work includes putting arguments before UN courts on the legal obligation to prevent climate change, acting for countries including Sierra Leone and Mozambique. Hioureas has also used international law to achieve post-conflict prosecutions for human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial killing in countries such as Cambodia and Chile.Ethan KlingsbergPartner, FreshfieldsEthan Klingsberg’s status as an adviser to leading Silicon Valley businesses, such as eBay and Google’s parent Alphabet, has made him a natural convener for many of the US’s most powerful business leaders, regulators and corporate advisers.As Freshfields’ co-head of US corporate and M&A, he has worked alongside the Berkeley Center for Law and Business for the past 10 years, curating topics and panellists for the influential Spring Forum, which helps participants stay on track with pressing corporate and regulatory trends.Klingsberg also remains busy in private practice at Freshfields. He joined five years ago after 25 years at Cleary Gottlieb, where he helped regularise merger and takeover agreements during a frenetic period of Silicon Valley dealmaking. It was work that helped to transform a number of small start-ups into multi-billion-dollar businesses.Daniel Lavon-KreinPartner, Kirkland & Ellis As co-founder and co-head of the strategic general partnership advisory practice at Kirkland, Daniel Lavon-Krein has been a pioneer in advising private equity sponsors and buyers on complex minority investments in existing firms, on sale-of-control, and on other strategic transactions.Lavon-Krein has worked on the formation and fundraising of more than 70 funds with total capital commitments exceeding $130bn. He has also advised more than 40 firms selling interests in this rapidly growing market, including work on the five biggest such deals completed so far. He has developed a particular expertise in advising private equity clients on succession planning and the consolidation of interests as the first generation of private equity owners begins to reach retirement. Recently, Lavon-Krein advised BlackRock on its $12.5bn acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners.Lisa MazurPartner, McDermott Will & EmeryThrough her legal practice, Lisa Mazur is dedicated to addressing the problem of inconsistent and limited provision of medical treatment across the US.She has assisted more than 100 healthcare providers in navigating the complex regulations and licensing requirements needed to extend their services across state lines.Mazur is the head of strategy for her firm’s healthcare practice and also co-head of its digital health practice — a role she has held since 2015.One particular aim is to help overcome a historic pattern where healthcare is often confined to a particular state, limiting patients’ access to other specialists and life-saving care.Her practice guides healthcare providers through complex state and federal rules, to expand their services more easily. She helped one client roll out online treatment for substance abuse across several states in a matter of weeks.Brenda ShartonPartner, DechertBrenda Sharton works on some of the most acute legal disputes over data privacy, between companies developing tech at high speed and lawmakers and citizens eager to protect personal information.She defended Prisma Labs over its photo-editing app Lensa, achieving two US court rulings that class actions cannot be brought by broad, non-specific groups of people whose online activities and biometrics may have been used to train AI.Sharton also helped Easy Healthcare to settle five multimillion dollar lawsuits over accusations that it had sold fertility data to third parties in breach of federal rules, and she has advised on upgrading its privacy policy. In 2022, she worked with fertility app Flo which, a year earlier, had settled similar complaints. Sharton helped it create an “anonymous mode”, protecting users against their data potentially being subpoenaed in prosecutions for prohibited abortions.
