#CovHasPride Spotlight Series: Bill Collins

Bill Collins, co-chair of Covington’s Energy Industry Group, has been immersed in the energy space for nearly 30 years. He has represented a range of energy clients, including investor-owned utilities, power producers, and renewable companies, on an array of project development, M&A, and financing transactions. Given that energy demand globally is expected to expand 30% between today and 2040—the equivalent of adding another China and India to today’s demand—Bill sees no reason to change his focus.

You have worked with a number of corporate clients in the energy space. How do you see boards demanding greater diversity, especially as it relates to the LGBT+ community?

Clients today, more so than ever before, require that their law firms incorporate LGBT+ inclusion into their client teams (and frankly everything else lawyers do), because they know it drives better business results and employee performance. We hear this all the time in casual conversations in relationship meetings we have with senior management of clients as well as more regularly and graphically in the requirements set forth in client-generated RFPs for new work. Covington embraces these situations as opportunities to distinguish who we are culturally from other law firms, and we consider how we approach and embrace the differences among us to be assets and a source of strength. Corporate clients do indeed take note too.