Bodunde Charles Adenola is a commercial lawyer with a specialist background in the energy industry. He advises on contracts, risk allocation and the strategic questions that arise where a project’s commercial ambitions meet its operational and regulatory realities.

His practice was built inside the industry rather than alongside it. He has worked in-house within the international energy services sector, on the contracts and commercial arrangements through which major energy projects are delivered, and in private practice in Nigeria across corporate, commercial and energy matters.

That background shapes what he brings to a project. Energy transactions rarely fail on the strategy. They fail in the detail: a risk that was never properly allocated, a delay provision that nobody stress-tested, an interface between contractors that no document actually governs, a change-order mechanism that collapses the first time it is used. Having sat on the operator’s side of those arrangements, he drafts and negotiates with a working knowledge of what happens when they are tested.

He is also clear that legal work should not become the reason a project slows down. Commercial momentum matters, and the objective is to allocate risk clearly enough that decisions can be made quickly.

Alongside leading the energy practice, Charles co-leads DLE’s corporate, capital markets and finance work, advising on corporate structuring, commercial contracting, transactions and dispute avoidance.

University of Aberdeen — LL.M., Energy Law

Nigerian Law School — B.L.

Benson Idahosa University — LL.B.