ICSC-Law 2025: Let’s Get Down to Business

Key Takeaways

• ICSC-Law 2025 emphasized deal-driven, practical lawyering, with a focus on making transactions work through collaboration, efficiency, and real-world problem solving.
• Effective deal management starts at the home office, including open communication among counsel and business teams, civility with counterparties, and advocacy oriented toward solutions rather than bickering.
• Thoughtful drafting and negotiation remain critical risk-management tools, as AGG-led sessions highlighted how defaults, exclusives, and so-called “boilerplate” provisions can drive outcomes long after a deal is signed.

ICSC-Law 2025 embraced a clear, energizing purpose: lawyers are here to make good deals happen. Under the leadership of Jon Neville, ICSC-Law chair and co-chair of AGG’s Retail team, every presentation, roundtable, and peer-to-peer exchange prioritized practical, real-world solutions over theory, and Jon challenged attendees to hold the speakers to this mandate. The result was a conference that delivered actionable guidance, sharpened skills for execution, and reinforced the value of collaborative lawyering.

Practical by Design

AGG Retail partner Cristina Bouton led the way with “Managing the Deal: What to do When the Dysfunction is on YOUR Side of the Table?” The takeaways were simple and workable: keep lines of communication open between in-house and outside counsel and the business teams; stay civil with counterparts because strong relationships often unlock stalled issues; understand your client’s communication preferences so you can deliver candid advice in the format they process best. And finally, don’t show up with a bag of problems. Bring solutions, too.

Highlights From AGG-Led Sessions

AGG attorneys also steered timely discussions across hot-button topics. In “Lease Defaults: Events of Default and Remedies from both Landlord and Tenant Perspectives,” AGG Retail attorney Jordyn Simon examined defaults through a litigation lens, translating dispute risk into better drafting and negotiating. Abe Schear, AGG partner and longtime retail leasing lawyer, led a session on “Anchor Exclusives and Prohibited Uses: Forbidden Concepts for Us to Anchor Your Center,” which provoked a robust conversation about predictable issues in complicated anchor leases. And in “Boilerplate Provisions: Nothing is Boilerplate…or Is It?” AGG Retail attorney Nolen Moore reminded everyone to read and negotiate the back end of the lease. No one wants to be parsing the force majeure clause for the first time in the middle of an actual force majeure.

What’s Next

The civil, solution-oriented, and efficient spirit of ICSC-Law 2025 shapes how AGG approaches retail real estate work, and together with you, we’re carrying this down-to-business mindset and practice habits straight into 2026.