Hilary serves as Vice Chair of Kutak Rock. In her practice, Hilary focuses on representing federal agencies, state and local governments, and schools to develop, procure, structure, negotiate, and implement public-private partnership (P3) projects. She has supported clients to accomplish billions of dollars of P3s resulting in the development of K-12 public schools, office buildings, hospitals, housing, retail, parking facilities, energy infrastructure, and other projects.

Clients often start working with Hilary during the inception stage of a P3 project, where she helps assess the parameters of their current legal authorities, and, to the extent the client deems necessary, drafts legislation to enable them to better achieve their goals. She helps clients define an optimal transaction structure, establish baseline requirements, and design a procurement process intended to elicit both project interest and substantive responses from potential private sector partners.  Hilary drafts requests for qualifications (RFQs) and requests for proposals (RFPs) and supports clients by participating in industry forums and one-on-one meetings with proposers, providing legal advice during selection meetings, and preparing briefing materials.

Hilary has led negotiations on and drafted a wide-range of agreements necessary to implement various P3 projects, including exclusive negotiating agreements, project agreements, leases, development agreements, operating agreements, deeds, memoranda of understanding, licenses, enhanced use leases, power purchase agreements, energy savings performance contracts, and pay for success contracts. Hilary supports clients to obtain any necessary approvals by preparing materials for stakeholder consideration and presenting to governing bodies or other approval authorities.  She aims to help clients identify and mitigate risks and design projects that will be operationally feasible and achieve desired outcomes.

Hilary helps clients implement P3 projects by developing guides, memoranda, or other tracking materials to support them in providing oversight of their counterparty and fulfilling their obligations. She has supported clients to negotiate and draft amendments to their project documents, participate in dispute resolution procedures, and terminate projects.

Additionally, Hilary has represented more than a dozen state and local governments involved in the military base realignment and closure (BRAC) process to acquire land from the Federal government (including through economic development conveyances, public benefit conveyances, and negotiated sales) and to implement projects resulting in the redevelopment of over 5,000 acres at closed military installations. She has also assisted governmental entities and other clients to create and implement grant programs, draft regulations and legislation, prepare policy reports, resolve disputes, negotiate settlements, and defend and prosecute litigation.