As 1 Mining Deal Led to Another, This Mayer Brown Partner Carved Out a Booming Niche

When Meaghan Connors joined Mayer Brown in Houston in 2010, the finance associate worked in oil and gas transactions, but also some mining deals. Her early involvement in the area helped Connors, now a partner, develop a practice focused on financing over a range of transactions in critical minerals, an area of focus under the Trump administration.

Connors said Trump administration policies aim to increase critical minerals production, and demand in her practice is increasing.

"The presidential administration is focused on securing the supply chain and the production of critical minerals [with] a number of executive orders focused on critical minerals [and] the push for domestic production of critical minerals," she said.

Connors' career niche developed as she worked with Mayer Brown partner Kevin Shaw—now a senior counsel—who Connors said has handled some of the "most historic" mining deals over the past 20 or 30 years.

"I learned under him and just started coming into my own under these deals," Connors said.

"There are very few mining lawyers in Texas, so she’s got a real niche there [in] the critical minerals—that is something that is merely a creature of the federal government—and she’s been working closely with our colleagues in Washington who are pretty tightly plugged into the developments," Shaw said.

"She’s a very enthusiastic practitioner. Unlike a lot of lawyers, she’s really focused on exactly what her clients want," he said.

Critical minerals have come to the forefront, according to a recent Mayer Brown paper written in part by Connors, after President Donald Trump signed the Unleashing American Energy executive order in January and the Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production executive order in March. In April, the Trump administration signed a deal with Ukraine providing for joint investment in Ukraine's natural resources, including some critical minerals.

The Energy Act of 2020 defines critical minerals a "non-fuel mineral, element, substance, or material that the Secretary of Energy determines" has a high risk of supply chain disruption and serves an essential function in one or more energy technologies, including materials such as aluminum, copper, platinum and others.

Connors said one of the first deals she worked on at a prior firm was a mining bankruptcy, and she did some more in the industry sector over the years, along with her finance work in the oil and gas sector. But, she said, leading up to the pandemic, she started doing more critical minerals work than oil and gas, and she spent a lot of time during that time frame researching critical minerals.

As it turned out, she said, oil and gas finance work "almost came to a pause," due to the price of oil, and finance lawyers had a lot of time on their hands as private equity investment was replacing traditional financing during that time.

Then came the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which provided a tax credit that mineral producers could take advantage of, she said.

"I started reading and writing a lot about it. I was becoming an expert in it, without realizing I was becoming an expert in it, because of the time I was investing," she said.

Connors said she consulted with Mayer Brown colleagues to understand the tax code, to determine how mining company clients and potential clients could take advantage of provisions of the IRA. It took a while—until the fall of 2024—for the government to issue regulations that would apply to the extraction of minerals from the ground, she said. However, she said, the IRA "really boosted" her mining practice, because there weren't very many "non-tax folks" writing about it.

"I started writing articles with more of a layman’s angle ... so you could understand. I really got a lot of market visibility from these articles," she said.

In 2023, Connors participated in a webinar on the topic, and people started reaching out to her with questions. An individual from the U.S. Department of Commerce was listening in and invited her to come to Washington, D.C., to participate on a panel for the mining industry. She said universities also asked her to speak on panels on tax credits and critical minerals.

"It really raised my profile in the community but also with potential client work. That’s kind of how the pivot happened, so I still do oil and gas work—not as much—a lot of critical minerals, and still do general financing," she said.

Connors said she is invited frequently to speak at critical mineral conferences, and is "clearly the busiest I've ever been in my career." Because of that, she is training a number of associates and is looking to expand the team.

According to data provided by the firm, the firm's critical minerals clients include National Bank of Canada, Central Asia Metals, and Taurus Mining Royalty Fund.

Shaw said he started his career as an oil and gas lawyer in Houston, but moved to Denver and did work for mining companies headquartered there as well as oil and gas companies. It was a natural evolution for his practice, he said, because both industry sectors involve "things in the ground you are trying to get out."

Mining in the U.S. trailed off because it became "sort of politically incorrect" to open mines in the U.S., he said, but noted he kept some clients and retained them after he returned to the Houston office around 2005. At some point, he recalled, he was working on a mining transaction, and Connors was an oil and gas finance associate who was "willing to jump into things and learn as much as she can as fast as she can."

After that, he said, he started to rely on Connors for mining deals, and a few years ago, work in the sector increased after the U.S. and Western countries realized they had an "unhealthy dependence" on China for critical minerals.

"Certainly with the current administration, there is a strong effort to revive mining, and certainly critical minerals," Shaw said.

Shaw, who is based in Houston and Los Angeles, is winding down his practice and transitioning it to younger lawyers as they are coming up and Connors fits into that picture.

"I think she knows she can always call me—and does call me—but she doesn’t need to anymore," he said.

Reprinted with permission from the August 12th edition of The Texas Lawyer © 2025 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.