North America Innovative Lawyers Report 2025
As part of The Financial Times’ 2025 North America Innovative Lawyers report, Melissa Kalka and Erica Berthou discussed the rapid acceleration of digital infrastructure investment and the increasingly sophisticated legal support required to keep pace.
Kirkland is among the preeminent advisers in the digital infrastructure space, distinguished by its fully integrated platform across all digital infrastructure asset classes and its ability to coordinate the multidisciplinary legal teams needed to execute these multibillion-dollar transactions. “I don’t have a deal on my desk that’s less than $4 to $5 billion,” Kalka told the FT, which noted that more than 100 Kirkland lawyers are dedicated full time to the data center sector.
“The latest trend is really funds focused on data centers, digital infrastructure funds—it’s really becoming a very precise asset class,” Berthou said. She was also named among the FT’s “Most Innovative Law Firm Practitioners” for establishing Kirkland’s infrastructure fund formation platform, equipped to respond to the surging demand for data centers and the energy infrastructure required to support them.
