Member Spotlight – Why property lawyer Alexa Woods prefers real estate deals to court room battles

Alexa Woods is a real estate investment and development lawyer with extensive experience in navigating highly nuanced public-private development agreements. She has a broad understanding of public inducements, public assistance, private financing and developer equity and has represented municipalities, other governmental entities and developers in negotiation of such agreements.

Alexa frequently serves as lead counsel in real estate financing transactions and works inside business combination, restructuring, merger, acquisition and disposition transactions. She has an active opinion practice relative to her financing and combination transaction work and frequently serves as local counsel for other law firms.

Alexa is a graduate of Indiana University, Purdue University Indianapolis and Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law. She has been recognized by Chambers USA and Best Lawyers in America. She is a member of the Urban Land Institute and a past chairwoman for the Business Law Section of the Indianapolis Bar Association. Alexa volunteers for the Indianapolis Humane Society.

Alexa Woods was a relative late comer to the law. She was 30 years old, married and keen to build a new career for herself as lawyer in Indianapolis.

At first Alexa wasn’t sure which practice area she wanted to focus on, but quickly understood that she preferred commercial and business transactions rather than the cut and thrust of adversarial legal issues.

“I’m just not keen on all that conflict,” she admits. “People think I always had this desire to work in real estate, but that’s not true either. I joined a firm after law school and liked the people in the real estate group – simple as that really. I liked the type of transactions and gravitated towards the people involved. I also really enjoyed working with the clients.”

Alexa believes that when most people first practice law they seldom know which area to focus on. But they tend to be sponges soaking everything up and looking for their own sweet spot. She knew early on she wasn’t cut out to be a litigation lawyer.

“All that arguing and tension you get with litigation,” she laughs. “On the other hand real estate is logical. Everyone needs housing, offices, buildings of some kind.”

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