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One of the world’s largest law firms is launching a dedicated space law practice as the clamor to advise the booming exploration sector intensifies.

DLA Piper will join professionals such as Mayer Brown and Hogan Lovells in creating a global team to advise the industry on regulatory and intellectual property matters, as well as dispute resolution. It will be led by Christian Ford, former US Department of Defense lawyernow based in Houston.

The move comes just weeks after Silicon Valley firm Wilson Sonsini hired former Spaceflight CEO Curt Blake to create a space industry practice group and capitalize on a sector analysts said was worth $546 billion in 2022, largely due to a market surge. private investments.

“Years ago, financial capabilities would have been needed [on] a ruler’s ladder to actually enter space,” said Frank Ryan, global co-president of DLA Piper, the third-largest U.S. company by revenue. “It’s not like that anymore.”

Driven by a sharp decline in launch costs, several space startups have gone public through special purpose acquisition companies in recent years, prompting Citi analysts to predict the sector could generate $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2040.

However, some space stocks have lost value competition has intensified and raising more and more funds became increasingly difficult.

According to Space Capital, an early-stage venture capital provider, private investment in the sector amounted to $8.2 billion in the first six months of 2023, more than 40% less than the same period in 2023. Last year.

Companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have also had to deal with an uncertain legal landscape, which has not evolved as quickly as the industry. Most international space laws were written in the 1960s and 1970s and largely aimed at states, rather than companies.

“The regulatory landscape is really nascent and still forming,” Ford said. “It will take a while before that. . .[there is a]defined or concrete legal framework”.

Among the unresolved issues are liabilities and responsibilities associated with space debris, made up of tens of thousands of debris from satellites and other space missions, and rules that would regulate the potential extraction of resources from other planets, such as water and minerals.

“There are more than a hundred projects that are going to the Moon and there is no regime on the rules of the road,” said Timiebi Aganaba, a space law expert and assistant professor of space and society at Arizona State University.

“What if people want to visit the same site? What if someone found all the water frozen? There’s nothing [to regulate] that,” he added. However, such issues are “not something we need to worry about in the next five years.” Rather, issues such as collision avoidance will likely take center stage as China, India and the United Arab Emirates, among others, attempt to come up with competing laws for the space.