Together with

Table of Contents

• EDITOR’S RAMBLE 🗣

• FEATURED REPORT 📰

• IN OTHER NEWS 🗞

• AROUND THE WEB 🌐

• STUFF THAT MIGHT HELP YOU 👌

EDITOR’S RAMBLE 🗣

I’m super excited to say that we’ve teamed with Linklaters for this newsletter (yes, you read that right: Linklaters).

And they've let us behind the scenes of something massive (bigger than a few hundred football pitches).

In this newsletter, we're breaking down how Linklaters helped fund the UK's first carbon capture mega-project — a deal that's literally creating the rules for a brand new industry.

But here's what I'm most excited about: we didn't just get the surface-level stuff you'd find in a press release.

We heard from the actual lawyers who worked on this deal — partners, senior associates, and trainees — and asked them to walk us through what they really did, day-to-day, to get this billion-pound project over the line.

Because that's what will help you.

Not just knowing that "Linklaters advised on a deal." But understanding things like:

→ What does that actually mean?
→ What were the trainees involved in?
→ What problems were the partners solving that no one had solved before?

So after you've read it, let me know.

Does this kind of content help you understand what working in commercial law is actually like?

It’ll take you 6 seconds to fill that poll out! 👆️ 

But, depending on what you say, it’ll help me to keep pushing for more partnerships with amazing law firms.

– Idin

P.S. It's your readership and support that's opened the doors for LittleLaw to work with a firm like Linklaters, so thank you.

FEATURED REPORT 📰

🏗️ How Linklaters powered up the UK’s first carbon capture mega-project

What’s going on here?

Linklaters advised a group of banks lending to fund two projects:

1. Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power) and

2. the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP).

These projects are the first steps towards building the UK’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) capability.

What are the projects?

Think of NZT Power and NEP as a two-part system.

🏭 NZT Power is a new natural gas power station in Yorkshire. It will burn gas to generate electricity. It will be constructed with in-built carbon capture equipment, so most CO₂ emissions will be trapped before they reach the air.

🚛 NEP is the corresponding transport and storage network. It will move the captured CO₂ from NZT Power (and, in future, other CO₂-generating projects in the area) through a pipeline under the North Sea and store it in rock formations about 1,000 metres below the seabed.

The two are separate projects, but make financial sense together: NZT Power produces the CO₂ (and the energy), and NEP transports and stores it underground.

Who owns the projects?

The ownership of the projects is shared between some of the world’s biggest energy companies:

NZT Power is owned in majority by BP, which holds a 75% stake. Norway’s Equinor owns the remaining 25%.

NEP is owned by BP and Equinor, each holding 45%. The French energy company TotalEnergies owns the final 10%.

How is the project being funded?

Both NZT Power and NEP are being funded through project finance — a way of paying for large infrastructure projects.

Think of it like this. Imagine you’re starting a business. But instead of dipping into your own savings or putting your personal assets on the line, you borrow money that’s secured against the business itself. Once the business starts making money, you use the business’s profits to pay the loan back.

That’s essentially how project finance works — the loan is secured against the project’s future income and assets, not the owner’s other assets.

Here, the money for these projects is being borrowed from a group of banks (including NatWest, Spain’s BBVA, and France’s Société Générale).

And these loans are only secured against the projects’ assets — like the power station and pipeline — and their future income. This allows BP, Equinor, and TotalEnergies to raise billions without needing to risk providing security which may impact their other businesses.

What role did Linklaters play?

Linklaters acted for the group of banks lending the money to fund the projects. 

The lenders’ goal was simple: get repaid in full, with interest, on time. 

Linklaters’ job was to make that as likely as possible — and to build in contractual protections in case anything goes wrong down the line.

So, here’s what the lawyers actually did to achieve this.

⚖️ Deciding who takes the risk: In established industries like offshore wind, it’s already clear who is responsible if something goes wrong. For example, if a turbine blade fails, the manufacturer (not the project owner) has to pay to replace it. This means the lenders aren’t exposed, because the project can still generate revenue and repay its debt.

Since CCS is new, it doesn’t yet have established rules for who takes which risks. So Linklaters had to negotiate these from scratch, including:

• What happens if construction is delayed or costs overrun, which could change how much is owed to lenders and when it gets repaid.

• What happens if a sponsor sells their stake, and who is then responsible for operating and managing the project.

• What happens if marine life is harmed by the storage site and the project is held liable.

And they wrote these into the contracts by:

• Including protection for the lenders if construction was delayed or costs overran — such as adjusting repayment terms and requiring insurance against delays.

• Setting rules on when sponsors could sell their stakes, and making sure whoever took over would properly manage the projects.

• Requiring environmental liability insurance so that if there was an incident, the project’s finances (and lenders’ repayments) would be protected.

🏛️ Protecting against changes in government policy: The projects only work financially if government subsidies — payments that support low-carbon technology — stay in place.

Linklaters made sure the loan contracts included “change in law” clauses. These clauses say that if the law changes — for example, if subsidies are cut — and the projects make less money as a result, the deal terms consider such changes so the lenders aren’t left out of pocket.

📑 The importance of ‘the legals’: Without things like clear allocation of risks or government commitments, the 20+ lenders would not have signed off on the project finance.

That’s how Linklaters helped turn an ambitious CCS plan into a financeable reality that banks were willing to support.

What role did trainees play in this?

Despite this being a complex financing deal, trainees and junior lawyers at Linklaters ran key parts of the process that kept the deal moving.

✍️ Drafting and negotiating documents: Trainees were responsible for certain processes, including conditions precedent (the approvals and paperwork needed before the banks release funds) and corporate authorisations (board and shareholder approvals for the deal).

They produced the first drafts, updated them after negotiations, and made sure the documents matched the rest of the deal. They also reviewed comments from the other sides’ lawyers, decided how to respond, and sometimes explained their choices directly on calls.

🗂️ Handling lender feedback: Junior team members processed detailed comments from the banks, making sure changes were tracked, logged, and fed into the right documents without creating inconsistencies.

✅ Managing conditions precedent: Trainees led the conditions precedent checklist — the approvals, documents, and contracts lenders required before releasing funds.

This meant collecting permits, licences, and regulatory approvals, chasing missing items, and flagging delays that could hold up funding.

🖋️ Running the signing process: Before closing the deal, trainees tracked all the necessary signatures from the parties, checking every document was the final agreed version.

What does this mean for the future of clean energy finance?

Because NZT Power and NEP were the first UK CCS projects, the contracts, risk allocation, and government support framework created here will pave the way for the future of low-carbon infrastructure.

Over time, we’re likely to see CCS deals become more standardised. Instead of negotiating risk-sharing from scratch, future projects may reuse the clauses developed here.

We’ll also see more joint ownership structures, with major companies teaming up to share the heavy costs and risks that come with untested technologies.

But one of the biggest uncertainties that remains is policy risk.

A change in UK climate policy could massively impact a project’s finances, making a deal less attractive for lenders. That’s why protections like “change in law” clauses will continue to be crucial in future CCS financings.

For an aspiring lawyer, Linklaters offers the chance to be at the heart of groundbreaking deals — shaping the rules for new industries, solving problems no one’s solved before, and seeing your work make a real-world impact on climate change.

IN OTHER NEWS 🗞

• 📈 Addleshaw Goddard had another strong year, with revenue up 11% to reach £551 million. It’s the firm’s eighth straight year of growth, helped by big deals like Nationwide’s £2.9 billion takeover of Virgin Money and a £350 million London IPO for Applied Nutrition. Addleshaws also kept expanding abroad, opening new offices in Madrid, Dublin, Warsaw and Abu Dhabi, while growing its UK presence in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

• 💰 Burford Capital, the big legal funder listed in New York and London, is in talks to buy stakes in US law firms. This is something that’s rarely allowed because most states ban non-lawyers from owning law practices. A few states like Utah and Arizona have relaxed the rules, opening the door for deals. Burford already owns 32% of London firm PCB Litigation and wants to push further, pitching itself as a friendlier option than private equity.

• ☕ Keurig Dr Pepper (the American drinks company behind brands like Dr Pepper and Snapple) is buying JDE Peet’s (the Dutch owner of the coffee brand Peet’s) for €15.7 billion. The buyer is being advised by Paul Weiss, while A&O Shearman represents JDE Peet’s. The companies will split into two: a new $16 billion coffee group (the largest pure coffee player in the world) and an $11 billion beverage business. The deal is expected to close in the first half of next year, subject to approvals.

AROUND THE WEB 🌐

• 🕰️ History: Convert Wikipedia articles into interactive timelines

• 💧 Drink: A Michelin-listed UK restaurant is serving a menu of bottled water

• 🎨 Story: Artist Yinka Ilori and Google built a colourful game based on a Nigerian parable

STUFF THAT MIGHT HELP YOU 👌

• 📹️ Free application help: If you're applying to commercial law firms, check out my YouTube channel for actionable tips and an insight into the lifestyle of a commercial lawyer in London.