Favorite Highlights and Session Takeaways from the 2025 ABA Forum on Construction Law Annual Meeting – Austin, TX: “Return of the Contractors: Transforming the Construction Landscape”.

By: Emily Price – Chief Legal Officer, Dynamic Trades, Inc.

I had the pleasure of attending my first in-person ABA Forum on Construction Law Annual Meeting this year in Austin, Texas last month. It did not disappoint! Before diving into my personal session takeaways, I wanted to share a few personal highlights from the trip.

Favorite Session:
Workshop D- “Surviving the Amazing Race: Navigating Subcontractor Relations with Contractors,” stood out to me overall for its real-time, three-way discussion from Owner, GC, and Subcontractor perspectives. It was practical, engaging, and provided great strategies for more effective contract negotiations!

Favorite Quote:
“As an architect, my favorite projects were ones that were never built” - Overheard during the excellent D2/3/5 lunch session on the challenges of terminating a designer in a design-build project – this got a good chuckle from the room!

Favorite BBQ:
Terry Black’s Barbecue was so tasty and worth every minute of the wait!

Cutest sighting in Austin:
Lots of turtles basking in the sun along the Lady Bird Lake trail on a morning run. Too cute!

Now that we’ve got some of the fun stuff out of the way, let’s jump into my personal key take-aways from the plenary sessions at Austin:

Plenary 1: Construction Management at Risk
Some important tips to avoid contingency disputes in the CM setting are: 1) separating owner and CM contingencies to limit fighting over funds, and 2) incorporating shared savings provisions to incentivize careful use of savings by both sides. Good teamwork upfront during contract negotiations (including price escalation discussions) is also key in mitigating GMP and price escalation issues or disputes down the road.

Plenary 2: Surety Secrets
We were reminded in this session to always follow termination procedures exactly as outlined in the bond and contract documents, because deviating from these steps could give the surety a defense to liability due to improper termination. Also, I know it may sound like a no brainer - but be sure to very carefully read your bond for these important procedures that you’ll hopefully never need to follow!

Plenary 3: Delegated Design
One good recommendation to help successfully administer design-build subcontracts is to use a peer review process to identify issues and double check design work (particularly for high-risk scopes like retaining walls). Just don’t assign the peer review to a design subcontractor’s competitor! 

Plenary 4: GC vs. Engineer Disputes
Negligence claims against a design professional can be successful for a contractor (compared to 3^rd party claims). Before pursuing a negligence claim it’s important to address these four questions:

1. Was reliance foreseeable?
2. What is the standard of care?
3. Does the economic loss rule bar purely financial damages?
4. Are there any disclaimers that bar or limit the claim?

Plenary 5: Turning Excuses into Compensation

Know the distinction between damages for delays and damages for disruption: delays extend time; disruptions increase costs without affecting schedule. Also, careful and detailed documentation is key in proving and presenting claims effectively!

Plenary 6: Navigating Ethical Issues when Parties Change Mid-Project:

This engaging final session included fanny-pack giveaways for audience participation and ended with a good list of ethical practices to avoid conflict issues:

1. Proactive conflict checks
2. Engagement letters and closure procedures
3. Thorough vetting of closed files
4. Carefully documenting informed consent
5. Ongoing ethics training

Well, that’s a wrap on Austin from my end! If you didn’t make it to the meeting this time around, hopefully you feel encouraged to consider joining next time!

Meet the Forum's In-House Counsel: AMANDA MESSA

This post was originally published by the D1 Blog, The Dispute Resolver, on May 20, 2025 by Jessica Knox.  Link to original post: https://abaconstructionforumdivision1.blogspot.com/2025/05/meet-forums-in-house-counsel-amanda.html

Company: The Lemoine Company

Email: amanda.messa@1lemoine.com
Website: 1lemoine.com
Law School: LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center (JD 2005)

States Where Company Operates/Does Business: LEMOINE is a Louisiana based ENR Top-400 Contractor since 2011 with a core practice in commercial construction as well as service lines in disaster services, program management services, infrastructure and fuel logistics.

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Q: Describe your background and the path you took to becoming in-house counsel.

A: After law school, I was privileged to work under some great litigators and mentors at the law firms of Wiener, Weiss & Madison and later, Phelps Dunbar.  I ultimately spent the majority of my litigation career at Phelps where I focused my practice on construction litigation.  In early 2021, LEMOINE reached out about an opportunity to become their first general counsel that I could not pass up.  The last 4 years have been both rewarding and challenging. I’ve worked to build structure and process around our legal and contracts departments as we have experienced tremendous growth.

Q: How does working in-house compare or differ from firm life?  

A: I think the difference that surprises people the most is I definitely work more than I did when I worked at a law firm. I just don’t have the billables to prove it! Another key difference is I often don’t get the opportunity to collaborate and research issues comprehensively like I used to. The days of creating a research memo are certainly gone. My focus has to be on coming up with the best practical solution to help our project teams keep things moving forward.  

Q: How and when do you use outside counsel?   

A: While I still enjoy a healthy sparing match from time to time, a general rule of thumb for me is when something starts to escalate towards litigation (or I start to get aggressive emails), it’s time to call my litigator friends.  From a capacity standpoint, I can’t be tied up for extended periods of time with hearings or depositions, and I need those valuable extra resources a law firm has to offer.

Q: What are the work/business-related issues that tend to keep you up at night?  

A: It’s the unknowns that keep me up at night – i.e. what new legislation (or currently, executive order) is coming down the pipeline that we need to be aware of and take into consideration as we expand in new geographic areas and service lines.  I rely heavily on firm blogs/updates to keep leadership and our project teams up to speed on new industry issues.

Q: What qualities or characteristics do you look for in outside counsel? 

A: Responsive and practical – Because of the pace at which things move in-house and the number of emails I get each day, I truly value those outside lawyers we work with that timely respond with succinct, practical guidance and updates.  If I’ve gone to outside counsel it’s because I’ve likely already run through the pros and cons and I need a recommendation based on their experience.

Q: What advice would you give to outside counsel about how to meet or even exceed their client's expectations? 

A: Spend some extra time (even if it’s non-billable) getting to know your client’s business – the specific industry they operate within, their leadership structure and the way they approach litigation and business issues. If you’re giving legal advice in a vacuum without that background information, it’s not going to be as effective.

Q: What is the biggest problem that you see when working with outside counsel? 

A: I’m still only a few years removed from the litigation practice so I remember how easy it can be to go down a rabbit hole on a particular legal issue.  But from an in-house perspective, we often have a very limited budget to spend and countless issues that will come up throughout the year.  On occasion, outside counsel will spend a lot of time on an issue that doesn’t necessarily warrant that allocation of resources from our end. I’ve tried to be more intentional about communicating expectations/goals/budgetary restrictions at the outset, but it’s great to proactively address those issues as outside counsel even if in-house counsel doesn’t raise them.  

Q: What are some of your interests or hobbies? 

A: Baseball and books!  13U baseball consumes a LOT of our weekends these days and gets me away from the computer screen.  It’s therapeutic for me to be outside watching our son (Wyatt) and his teammates compete in travel baseball tournaments. Our daughter (Jules) has even started to join in on the fun and is learning to record the plays in game changer. In the last 9 months, I’ve also taken up reading for the first time in over 20+ years. It’s been a great way to keep me on the elliptical machine longer and provides another escape from the constant flow of work emails.