Data Centers

Phillips Lytle’s Data Centers Team provides comprehensive legal counsel to clients throughout the entire data center lifecycle, from development, siting and construction, to acquisitions and sales, and ongoing operations.

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Deep Experience in a Wide Range of Data Center Development, Permitting, Transactional and Operational Issues

Our data center expertise provides comprehensive legal counsel to clients throughout the entire data center lifecycle, from development, siting and construction, to acquisitions and sales, and ongoing operations. Our attorneys have extensive experience representing a wide range of clients in the data center industry, including developers, sellers and buyers, investors, and operators. We leverage our real estate, transactional, regulatory and operational expertise with energy, fiber optic and wireless networks to provide comprehensive support to facilitate data center projects. In representing data center clients, we utilize a multidisciplinary approach which includes seasoned attorneys from our Real Estate, Energy and Renewables, Telecommunications, Corporate and Business Law, Environmental Law, Tax and, Banking and Financial Services Teams, and when necessary our Litigation Team. In addition, Phillips Lytle also delivers a top team of Data Privacy and Cybersecurity lawyers to navigate the complexities of various state privacy laws.

Data Center Development and Construction

Phillips Lytle is skilled in acquiring and leasing real property for data center development, including site selection, land use, permitting and zoning, financing, construction contracts, the deployment of fiber connectivity, and negotiation of microgrid and power purchase agreements, to support the center as well as managing the environmental review process. Often cooling and related noise concerns are a significant issue to be addressed, and we have significant experience with noise mitigation. Our representation includes both obtaining environmental and land use approvals and defending the same.

Data Center Acquisitions and Sales, Mergers and Joint Ventures

We represent buyers and sellers in data center acquisitions and sales transactions, mergers and joint ventures, including the negotiation of purchase and sale agreements, corporate and tax structuring issues (including tax transfer and other tax issues), due diligence, title, regulatory issues, and closing and post-closing issues.

Data Center Leasing and Operations

Whether leasing out rack space, a private turnkey suite or an entire floor in a data center, or deploying edge data centers, we have assisted data center operators in creating and negotiating the agreements for operating their businesses. We advise both property owners (landlords) and tenants on data center leasing transactions, including the negotiation of long-term leases. Our expertise with energy development, storage and procurement, as well as with telecom leases is deep. Our work also includes agreements for day-to-day operations of data centers, including Master License and Service Agreements for space and power, as well as exhibits that include customer service order forms; cross-connection order forms; service level agreements; and meet-me room rules and policies. We have represented data center operators with Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 compliant facilities with an Overall Tier III rating and a Tier IV rating on critical infrastructure.

Data Center Regulatory Compliance

We also advise clients on a range of data center compliance issues, including data privacy, cybersecurity, energy efficiency, tax and other development incentives, and permitting and environmental issues.

Meet Our Data Centers Team


Bruce Frankiewich
Bruce T. Frankiewich Special Counsel
David E. Bronston Special Counsel
Anna Mercado Clark Partner, Chief Information Security Officer, Governing Committee
PL-Bio-Feature-DimitroffDouglas
Douglas W. Dimitroff Partner, Managing Partner, Governing Committee
David Flynn
David P. Flynn Partner
Asaf Hahami Partner
Timothy P. Moriarty Partner
Kimberly R. Nason Partner
TEAM LEADER
Bruce T. Frankiewich Special Counsel
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David E. Bronston Special Counsel
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Anna Mercado Clark Partner, Chief Information Security Officer, Governing Committee
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Douglas W. Dimitroff Partner, Managing Partner, Governing Committee
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Meet the Team
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