Calendar of Events

April 2025 Chapter Meeting - featuring a presentation by Chris Talcott: Commercial Real Estate: A Project View.

In law school, students are often taught to view the lawyer’s role in a deal as that of a “transaction cost engineer”.  In this sense, the lawyer helps the business representatives develop mechanisms to manage transaction costs, like uncertain liability exposure or unequal knowledge positions, that may be difficult to identify, quantify, and manage in the abstract.  By addressing and managing these costs through agreement terms, the lawyer helps create the environment where the two parties can meet and come to terms on a deal.  While this theoretical role and explanation is attractive, the real world tends to be much more practical.  Many times, a client comes with the deal made, and it is the job of the lawyer to shepherd it through to closing.  In this sense, the role of the lawyer may be much closer to that of a project manager.  This presentation will walk through a typical commercial real estate transaction as a case study of the implementation of project management principles from initiation of the project upon signing the purchase agreement, through interim phases involving buyer due diligence and contingency satisfaction, and on through closing of the transaction.

Chris Talcott is a shareholder with Dentons Davis Brown PC, currently serving as the Business Division Chair of its Energy Department and recently serving as Co-Chair of its Real Estate Department.  His main clients in recent years include a family-owned hospitality company that owns and operates a multistate portfolio of hotels and restaurants; developers of utility-scale wind and solar energy projects; a national owner and operator of multifamily housing properties; and developers of large-scale data centers. Chris received his J.D. from Drake Law School in Des Moines, Iowa, and his LLM from New York University School of Law.  He is a shareholder with the Iowa office of the global Dentons law firm, but he lives in Tallahassee, where he moved 5 years ago to be with his wife (a fellow Iowa transplant) and three stepsons (pure Florida boys).  He is licensed in both Iowa and Florida and has clients in both states.