Connecting the Threads X: The Art of the Deal
The Infrastructure of Artificial Intelligence
Dean Fershée’s topic is “The Infrastructure of Artificial Intelligence: Data Center M&A and the Race for Capacity.” The extraordinary growth of artificial intelligence is fueling a wave of data center mergers, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships. As technology companies and investors compete to secure the infrastructure necessary to support increasingly demanding AI applications, data center assets have become central to broader questions of economic strategy and technological leadership. Dean Fershée will examine the forces driving this surge in transaction activity and the legal, regulatory, and governance issues it presents. Specifically, he will argue that the infrastructure supporting AI has emerged as a critical strategic asset, reshaping markets, influencing corporate dealmaking, and raising important questions about competition, innovation, and the future development of the digital economy.
AI in the M&A Process and Professional Responsibility
Professor Weldon’s presentation will take a practical look at where AI is entering the M&A process and how it may change the work at each stage of a deal, from deciding what to buy and identifying potential targets through diligence, valuation, structuring, negotiation, drafting, signing, closing, and integration. Generative and agentic AI are beginning to reshape the full M&A lifecycle. Companies can already use AI to help identify and screen acquisition targets, analyze strategic fit, review large volumes of diligence materials, model transactions, compare deal terms, generate and revise agreements, track closing conditions, and support post-acquisition integration. Increasingly, the technology is moving beyond tools that perform isolated tasks toward systems capable of coordinating connected, multi-step workflows across a transaction. Professor Weldon will examine what happens when buyers and sellers can analyze more information faster, diligence teams can surface contractual and operational risks across thousands of documents, and AI can produce sophisticated drafts, redlines, issue lists, and negotiation alternatives in seconds. Those capabilities raise larger questions about the role and economics of the M&A lawyer. If technology reduces the time required for document review, drafting, comparison, and transaction management, what happens to staffing models, leverage, billing, profitability, and client expectations? Where does the lawyer’s value move when producing the first draft or finding the relevant clause becomes easier? And which parts of dealmaking, including business judgment, negotiation, risk allocation, strategic counseling, relationship management, and accountability, become more valuable rather than less? The session will also explore what these changes mean for the development of lawyers and legal education. If AI increasingly performs some of the work through which transactional lawyers traditionally learned their craft, how will lawyers develop the expertise necessary to evaluate and supervise increasingly capable systems? What should it mean to teach M&A contract drafting when generating language may no longer be the hardest part of drafting? This presentation will address the professional responsibility issues that accompany these changes, including competence, confidentiality, and supervision under the ABA Model Rules and Formal Opinion 512, while also considering the human consequences of faster dealmaking. Will AI-created capacity be used to improve judgment, learning, client-relationships, and lawyer well being, or simply to increase volume and compress timelines? Drawing on perspectives from transactional legal education, co-leading legal training for a frontier large language model, and advising founders preparing companies for growth, investment, and potential acquisition, the presentation will connect emerging AI capabilities to the practical realities of dealmaking and conclude with a larger question: If AI can do more of the work across the deal lifecycle, what should M&A lawyers become exceptionally good at doing themselves?
The Role of Junior Associates in M&A Transactions in the Age of AI
Mr. Tipton’s topic is “The Role of Junior Associates in M&A Transactions in the Age of AI.” Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the practice of mergers and acquisitions at large law firms, with particularly significant implications for the traditional role of junior associates. Historically, junior lawyers have developed transactional judgment through labor-intensive tasks such as due diligence, document review, drafting ancillary agreements, managing disclosure schedules, conducting research, and coordinating the closing process – many of the same tasks now increasingly susceptible to automation or substantial AI assistance. This symposium contribution examines how law firms can capture the efficiency and accuracy gains offered by AI without eliminating the formative experiences through which junior associates acquire the skills necessary to become effective senior transactional lawyers. It considers whether the conventional apprenticeship model of M&A practice must evolve from learning through repetitive execution toward earlier emphasis on judgment, negotiation, deal structure, client counseling, and supervision of technology assisted work. The discussion also explores the corresponding implications for staffing models, associate training, professional responsibility, client expectations, and the economics of leveraged law-firm practice. Ultimately, the article argues that the central challenge posed by AI is not determining which junior associate tasks can be automated but redesigning transactional practice so that the next generation of M&A lawyers can develop expertise in an environment in which performing those tasks is no longer the principal means of learning the craft.
Banking on Private Equity
Professor Baker’s topic is “Banking on Private Equity.” In March 2026, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) rescinded their 2009 Statement of Policy on Qualifications for Failed Bank Acquisitions. A year prior, financial economists – including at the FDIC – reported positive impacts from private equity acquisition of failed banks in the 2008 crisis on local economies, bank branch survival rates, deposit growth rates, small-business lending, and other related measures. Nevertheless, in the U.S., mixing commerce and banking has historically been fraught with controversy. Private equity itself has long been a contentious topic. Professor Baker’s presentation will provide a brief overview of the FDIC’s acquisition process for failed banks; review recent regulatory changes that promote an evolving role for private equity in this space; analyze potential benefits and costs of this development, including a potential emergency exception for shelf charters; and conclude by situating this development within the broader landscape of the accelerating erosion between public and private markets.
Insider Trading Risks in the World of M&A
Dean Anderson’s topic is “Insider Trading Risks in the World of M&A.” This presentation will provide an overview of the law of insider trading as it applies to the M&A context, assess the risks parties face, and offer strategies for individuals and firms who are involved in these transactions to avoid liability. In the absence of a clear statutory regime, the scope of insider trading liability (both civil and criminal) is often criticized as problematically vague and undefined. Innovative regulators and prosecutors will often press new theories of liability and leave the courts to decide their viability. This can present significant risks of liability to even well-meaning traders, and those risks only increase for persons within the orbit of a potential Merger and Acquisition transaction. The risks of insider trading liability increase in the M&A context because the players (officers, directors, printers, lawyers, etc.) are exposed to material nonpublic information with regularity (at the office, in the boardroom, and at the negotiating table) and then they will take that information out into more casual environments (coffee houses, cocktail receptions, dinner tables, sporting events, bedrooms, etc.) where casual conversations can lead to leaks. Since the stock price changes are often certain and dramatic upon public release of this information, the temptation for parties – and for their friends and family members – to rationalize a tip or trade “just this once” can be extreme. The forms and theories of liability are as varied as the risks and temptations. Traditional theories include classical, misappropriation, and tipper-tippee liability pursuant to §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. But there are also special forms of liability applying to tender offers (SEC Rule 14e-3) and short-swing trading by certain insiders (§16 of the Securities Exchange Act). Traders who may be confident they are outside the scope of liability under traditional interpretations may face an investigation under new approaches, such as the “Shadow Trading” theory of insider trading liability.