Unprecedented Times: An Interview Panel With 2025 Top Construction Law Firms

By: David McMillin

Partners at some of CE’s 2025 Top 50 Construction Law Firms offer perspectives on the state of contract disputes, recent victories worth celebrating and implications of the Trump administration’s changes to the legal landscape.

In a typical year, construction law doesn’t change all that much—but so far, 2025 has been anything but a typical year. Before the Trump administration reached its first-100-days mark, attorneys were already combing through the language of nearly 130 executive orders. While executive orders are nothing new—President Biden signed more than 160, and President Trump signed more than 200 in his first term—many of the recent actions are fundamentally changing the way that construction firms operate.

How should you manage an uptick in uncertainty? Which cases are moving through the courts that could impact your jobsites? And what can you do to increase your odds of avoiding mediation, arbitration or litigation? There are no easy answers to any of these questions, but following the lead of some of the industry’s brightest legal minds—all of whom practice among CE’s most recent edition of the Top 50 Construction Law Firms—can put you on a course for success.

TARIFF TALK

When the Trump Administration unveiled plans to impose a sweeping new set of tariffs in the spring, the vast majority of construction firms felt a figurative crack in their foundations: In April, around 80% of ABC contractors reported that suppliers had notified them of price increases, and nearly 20% of them had projects paused or interrupted. As leaders continue to worry about what those price increases might do to their business models, they’re spending more time talking to their attorneys.

(…) some members of the industry believe that the tariffs will have positive effects. Ed Seglias, co-CEO and construction partner at Cohen Seglias, points out that there are portions of the building ecosystem that favor the Trump administration’s initiatives.

“The steel mills and the fabricators have been undercut in pricing by imported steel—particularly from China, Canada or Mexico,” Seglias, who also serves as general counsel for the American Institute of Steel Construction, says. “Their cost structure is different due to government support for those industries, and as a result, they’re able to sell steel in situations below what a competitive fabricator could produce it for in the United States.”

DIGGIN IN THEIR HEELS

Despite all the changes that have shaken up the industry this year, there is one constant that will always be part of construction: Projects will fall off track, parties will disagree and problems will arise. However, those disputes are looking a bit different these days—and not in a good way. Seglias says he has noticed a trend of parties who are in contract disputes “digging in harder and deeper.”

“Getting cases to resolve has never been easy, but it seems to be more difficult than it used to be,” he says. “In the mediation process, I’m having less initial success than we have had in the past.”

Seglias believes that economic factors including supply-chain volatility and pricing are playing a role as both sides of the bargaining table face increased pressure to manage their bottom lines. Despite spending full days in mediation without making any meaningful progress, Seglias points to a reason to be hopeful for a smoother process in the future. “I believe AI may help us,” he says. “Commercial cases like ours are heavily documented with drawings and specifications, contracts, project records, correspondence, meetings minutes and more.”

All those documents translate to very valuable inputs for AI. As that technology gets more sophisticated, Seglias expects that attorneys will be able to share AI-generated narratives that offer a forecast of which party will win and by how much. That kind of third-party opinion may be able to encourage parties to agree to a settlement rather than dragging it out in arbitration. He adds that AI is already playing a role in fueling greater efficiencies in the construction legal process, too.

“It’s helped our firm with summation of depositions,” he says. “At one point in time, it could easily take a paralegal a full day to read through a 200-page transcript. Now, we can put it into an AI program that can generate a 10-page summary in a few minutes. It’s a big time saver.”