Lawyer profiles · 18 September 2026
Mai Kuroda is a partner in the Melbourne office of the international law firm White & Case, where she advises sponsors and financiers on energy, mining and infrastructure projects. This is what the public record says about her: her practice, how she became a partner, what the Victorian register of lawyers shows, and the projects her firm says she has worked on.
Mai Kuroda is a partner at White & Case LLP in Melbourne. Her firm places her in its Energy, Infrastructure, Project and Asset Finance Group and describes a practice built around major transactions in the energy, mining and infrastructure sectors, acting mainly for project sponsors and the banks and funds that finance them.
She is not a barrister and does not appear in the peer-review rankings this site usually draws on. She is a transactional solicitor whose name appears in the public record through her firm's announcements, the Victorian register of lawyers and the projects she has worked on. That record is what this article sets out.
Mai Kuroda is a Melbourne projects lawyer. White & Case elected her to its partnership in October 2021, effective 1 January 2022, in what the firm called its largest partner class ever. The Victorian Legal Services Board + Commissioner's register lists her as a principal of the firm with practice areas in building and construction, business and corporate law, and energy and resources, and lists Japanese among her languages. Her firm's profile names eight projects she has advised on, from the Ichthys LNG development off Western Australia to the sale of Marinus Link and the Queensland Train Manufacturing Program.
Editorial profile · not a paid listing
Partner · White & Case LLP · Melbourne
White & Case's profile describes her work in three parts. The first is project development: advising on the development of electricity and gas transmission projects and of generation projects, both renewable and conventional. The second is the contracts that build those projects. The firm says she has extensive experience with engineering, procurement and construction contracts, early contractor involvement arrangements, consultancy and services contracts, and major equipment supply contracts. The third is the network side: connection and access issues, and contracts relating to electricity and gas transmission and distribution.
The firm lists her service areas as project development and finance, construction, power, mining and metals, and infrastructure, and says she works primarily for sponsors and financiers. That combination, construction contracts on one side and financing on the other, is the usual shape of a projects practice: the lawyer who drafts the build contract is often also the one who has to explain to a lender why the risk allocation in it is bankable.
On 8 October 2021 White & Case announced the promotion of 59 lawyers to its partnership worldwide, effective 1 January 2022, across 12 practices and 24 offices. The firm's chair, Hugh Verrier, called it the largest class of partners in the firm's history. Mai Kuroda was named a partner in the firm's Global Project Development and Finance Practice, based in Melbourne, with a focus on major development projects for energy, mining, power generation and transmission companies.
Lawyers Weekly and Australasian Lawyer both reported the promotion on 13 October 2021. She was one of two new Australian partners in that round, alongside Melbourne property lawyer Andrea Reeves, and the promotions took the firm's Australian partnership to 23. Andrew Clark, the firm's regional section head for Asia-Pacific projects and dispute resolution, said at the time: "Our new partners in Australia demonstrate the highest level of expertise in their fields."
Neither the firm's profile nor the trade press coverage records where she studied, when she was admitted or where she worked before White & Case. This article does not claim any of those things.
We searched the Victorian Legal Services Board + Commissioner's public register of lawyers on 18 September 2026. It returns one result for the surname Kuroda:
A principal practising certificate authorises its holder to practise as a principal of a law practice. "Without Trust" means the certificate does not carry authorisation to receive trust money, which the Board grants separately. For a partner in a large firm whose work is transactional rather than client-money handling, that is a routine configuration and says nothing about seniority.
The register does not publish admission dates or practising history, so we cannot say from it when she was admitted or how long she has practised.
White & Case's profile lists eight matters. For each, we summarise what the firm says her role was and then add what the public record says about the project itself. The firm's page is the only source for her involvement. Large projects are staffed by teams, and nothing below should be read as a claim about which lawyer did what within them.
The firm says she acted for the project's sponsors on the development of the Shenandoah South Pilot Project, including the development agreement and the foundation gas transportation agreement with APA Group for the Sturt Plateau Pipeline, and on the financing of the Sturt Plateau Compression Facility, which includes a guarantee from the Northern Territory Government. The firm says she continues to advise on the project. Its page does not name the sponsors.
The project is operated by Tamboran Resources through the Beetaloo Joint Venture. Tamboran announced a final investment decision on 30 September 2025, covering five wells and the compression facility. The facility is a 50-50 partnership between Tamboran and Daly Waters Infrastructure, financed with up to A$179.8 million of debt, of which the Northern Territory Government guaranteed up to A$75 million of Tamboran's share. Gas is sold to the Territory under a fixed-price agreement for 40 terajoules a day. On 1 September 2026 Tamboran announced that gas commissioning of the facility had begun, with first sales to the Territory described as imminent.
The firm says she acted for TasNetworks on the sale of its subsidiary, Marinus Link Pty Ltd, to the Commonwealth, Victorian and Tasmanian governments, including the subsea cable capacity reservation and underwriting arrangements for the link.
Marinus Link is the proposed undersea electricity and data connection between Tasmania and Victoria. On 26 March 2024 Marinus Link Pty Ltd announced that it had moved to three-way government ownership: the Australian Government holding 49 per cent, Victoria 33.3 per cent and Tasmania 17.7 per cent. Until then the company had been a subsidiary of TasNetworks, owned by the State of Tasmania.
The firm says she acted for Downer EDI Rail on its successful bid to the Queensland Government to deliver the $4.6 billion Queensland Train Manufacturing Program, including the major design and construct subcontracts with Gamuda and John Holland for the stabling, depot and train manufacturing facilities.
White & Case announced the deal on 17 July 2023. The program involves designing, manufacturing and commissioning 65 six-car passenger trains at a purpose-built facility at Torbanlea in the Maryborough region, a new maintenance and stabling facility at Ormeau on the Gold Coast, and maintenance of the fleet and facilities for an initial 15 years with extensions of up to 35. The firm's team was led by Melbourne partner Joanne Draper and listed Mai Kuroda among the partners on the matter.
The firm says she acted for AusNet on its successful bid to the Australian Energy Market Operator to build, own and operate the contestable assets for the Western Renewables Link, and on the upgrade of the related non-contestable assets.
AusNet Services announced on 17 December 2019 that its commercial division, Mondo, had been selected by AEMO after a competitive tender to build, own and operate the contestable assets of what was then called the Western Victoria Transmission Network Project: a new terminal station at North Ballarat, a new 220 kV line of about 110 km to Bulgana and a new 500 kV line of about 80 km to Sydenham, with AusNet also delivering most of the non-contestable network changes and receiving fixed payments over terms of about 30 years. The project is now known as the Western Renewables Link. AusNet describes it as a 190 km high-voltage line carrying renewable energy from Bulgana in western Victoria to Sydenham in Melbourne's north-west.
The firm says she acted for INPEX on the front-end engineering and design packages for the Abadi LNG Project's floating production, storage and offloading vessel, onshore processing facility, sub-surface infrastructure and gas export pipeline.
INPEX announced on 4 August 2025 that FEED work had begun on the Abadi project in the Masela Block, operated by its subsidiary INPEX Masela. The work is split into four packages: the onshore LNG plant, the FPSO, subsea umbilicals, risers and flowlines, and the gas export pipeline, each with a carbon capture and storage scope. The FPSO package uses a dual-FEED approach, with two contractor consortia working in parallel. INPEX expects the project to produce about 9.5 million tonnes of LNG a year.
The firm says she acted for INPEX on the engineering, procurement, construction and installation contracts for the project's offshore facilities, the FPSO and the central processing facility.
Ichthys is one of Australia's largest resource developments. INPEX describes a field about 220 km off the Western Australian coast in the Browse Basin, produced through the Ichthys Explorer central processing facility and the Ichthys Venturer FPSO, with an 890 km subsea pipeline carrying gas to processing facilities near Darwin. Production began in July 2018. The project is designed to produce up to 9.3 million tonnes of LNG a year over about 40 years.
The firm says she acted for Jemena on its winning bid to the Northern Territory Government for the financing, construction and operation of the Northern Gas Pipeline, including the gas transportation and processing arrangements and downstream procurement, and more recently on the capital works to enable the pipeline's reversal and the associated gas transportation arrangements.
The Territory Government named Jemena preferred bidder for what was then called the North East Gas Interconnector in November 2015. The result is a 622 km pipeline from Tennant Creek to Mount Isa that began commercial operation in January 2019 with a nameplate capacity of 90 terajoules a day, built to carry Territory gas to the east coast. The reversal works, delivered by Jemena's affiliate Zinfra, made the pipeline bi-directional so that up to 60 terajoules a day can flow the other way, from Queensland into the Territory. The ABC reported in July 2025 that the Territory's power utility now relies on that capacity as a backstop after output from its long-term supplier, the Blacktip field, fell short.
The firm says she acted for Regional Power Corporation on the development of a hybrid gas-fired power station and renewable facilities, solar and wind with battery storage, at Esperance in Western Australia.
Regional Power Corporation is the Western Australian state-owned utility that trades as Horizon Power. Pacific Energy, which built and operates the system, describes a 22 MW gas power station, a 4 MW solar farm, two 4.5 MW wind turbines and a battery, delivered under a build-own-operate arrangement with a 20-year power purchase agreement and operating since 2022. It describes the result as Western Australia's first town-scale hybrid power system.
This site's practitioner profiles usually rest on peer-review rankings and register checks. For Mai Kuroda the register check is above. On rankings:
Nothing in that should be read against her. Directory rankings skew towards practitioners who are put forward for them, and a transactional partner's reputation lives mostly in the deals she is trusted with. We simply do not claim rankings we cannot show.
There are no client reviews of Mai Kuroda on this site. She has not claimed a profile here, and the profile card above links to her firm's page rather than to a Lawyer Reviews listing.
Mai Kuroda is a partner in the Melbourne office of White & Case LLP, an international law firm. She works in the firm's Energy, Infrastructure, Project and Asset Finance Group and advises sponsors and financiers on major energy, mining and infrastructure transactions.
A solicitor. The Victorian register of lawyers lists her as holding a principal practising certificate and practising at White & Case. She is not a member of the Victorian Bar.
White & Case announced her election to the partnership on 8 October 2021, effective 1 January 2022, as one of 59 new partners worldwide and one of two in Australia that year.
Her firm's profile lists the Shenandoah South Pilot Project in the Beetaloo Basin, the sale of Marinus Link Pty Ltd, the Queensland Train Manufacturing Program, the Western Renewables Link, the Abadi LNG Project, the Ichthys LNG Project, the Northern Gas Pipeline and the Esperance Power Station.
The Victorian register lists building and construction, business and corporate law, and energy and resources. Her firm lists project development and finance, construction, power, mining and metals, and infrastructure.
The Victorian register of lawyers lists Japanese under languages for her entry. This site has not verified that independently.
Not in the Victorian energy and resources lawyer lists for 2022 or 2023, which we checked. We could not locate later editions of that list and did not check other directories, so we make no claim either way.
Through White & Case's Melbourne office. Her firm profile publishes a direct line, +61 3 8486 8022, and an email address.
This is an editorial profile. Mai Kuroda and White & Case have not paid for it, were not consulted on it and have no commercial relationship with Lawyer Reviews Australia. Every fact in it is attributed to a public source listed below, and the firm's own profile is the only source for her involvement in any matter. The photograph is the portrait White & Case publishes on her profile page, reproduced for identification. If Ms Kuroda or the firm would like a correction, or the photograph removed, email hello@lawyerreviews.com.au and it will be done.