DLA Piper’s first annual Private Credit Academy: Key takeaways

On March 11, 2026, DLA Piper hosted its first annual Private Credit Academy, a day-long, deal-driven training program for junior to mid-level professionals seeking to deepen their understanding of the private credit market and sharpen their technical skills across the full deal life cycle. At the event, DLA Piper lawyers and industry professionals came together to share strategies and insights across six panels focusing on today's private credit landscape.

Below, we highlight each panel’s discussion topic and key takeaways.

Panel 1: Direct lending fund formation

• While direct lending funds continue to be closed-ended funds with capital call mechanics, panelists noted that open-ended and hybrid "evergreen" structures are gaining traction in the market.


• Certain key differences between a private equity fund and a direct lending fund include shorter life cycles and lower fee rates for direct lending funds, with a European-style cumulative waterfall payment mechanism being more common than determining waterfall payments on a deal-by-deal basis.


• Where direct lending funds anticipate having non-United States investors, panelists encouraged these funds to consider potential tax issues when structuring the fund to manage the applicability of and ensure compliance with US tax laws and regulations. Examples of tax structuring considerations include portfolio interest exemption, effectively connected income risk mitigation, numerical loan origination limits, and levered blockers.

Panel 2: Financing tools of a private credit fund

• A private credit fund has a variety of leverage products available across its life cycle. During early stages, private credit funds commonly access leverage through subscription facilities (built on unfunded commitments). In middle and later stages, the fund can continue to access leverage through net asset value and warehouse facilities (driven by eligible investments).


• Panelists noted that best practices include engaging fund and asset-level counsel early and throughout the life of the fund to align structures, avoid conflicts across documentation layers as the fund levers up, and optimize execution of the fund.

Panel 3: Direct lending private credit vs. syndicated loan market

• Private credit, typically involving deals ranging from $25 million to $2 billion in size, offers execution certainty, speed, confidentiality, and bespoke structures. However, broadly syndicated loans, typically involving deals ranging from $350 million to over $10 billion in size, provide full bank platforms and potential market upside, but carry syndication risk and market flex.


• Private credit maintains maintenance financial covenants and tighter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization constructs, whereas broadly syndicated loans are typically covenant-lite with more permissive addbacks.


• Panelists focused on liability management exercise protections, as private credit often prohibits or tightly restricts dropdown, uptiering, and double-dip transactions, while broadly syndicated loan documentation is more permissive though evolving.

Panel 4: Asset-backed finance: Opportunities and risks

• The global private asset-backed finance (ABF) market (valued at approximately $6.1 trillion today and projected to be approximately $9.2 trillion by 2029) is a fast-growing segment in private credit, driven by bank retrenchment and limited partner diversification.


• Recent fraud cases highlight risks of double-pledging, inflated collateral, and overreliance on borrower-provided data – though the panel emphasized that these appear idiosyncratic, not systemic, and that the occurrence of such fraud cases incentivizes secured parties to verify collateral independently and continuously.

Panel 5: Exercising remedies in private credit

• Upon borrower default, panelists encouraged lenders to follow a five-step framework: diagnose the default, review all transaction documents, obtain borrower information, communicate strategically while reserving rights, and develop a response strategy preserving leverage.


• Remedies generally fall into two separate categories: 1) consensual remedies, which include amendments, forbearance agreements (which will generally require tighter baskets, enhanced reporting, and increased fees), and voluntary asset transfers and 2) non-consensual remedies, which range from DACA sweeps, default interest, set-off rights to proxy-based "board flips," UCC Article 9 foreclosure, and suits to collect. Panelists encouraged lenders to strategically evaluate all remedies prior to any exercise to conserve their ability to exercise any and all such remedies during the continuance of a default.

Panel 6: How technology and AI are transforming private credit

• The panel highlighted several high-value artificial intelligence (AI) use cases, including deal origination and screening, where borrower data can be condensed into concise briefings within minutes and screening time reduced from hours to minutes; due diligence, where natural language processing extracts hidden risks from complex contracts and footnotes; contract drafting, benchmarking, and review, where AI generates custom legal clauses, compares contract versions, and benchmarks terms against market standards with risk scores; and financial covenant accuracy, where AI translates complex covenant formulas into plain-language summaries and validates financial data across a document.


• AI can and will increasingly be used by private credit professionals in their day-to-day. AI systems can facilitate efficiency in performing repetitive, evidence-based work that goes into making credit decisions, thus allowing private credit professionals to spend more time and energy on substantive, judgment-based matters.

Learn more

The session recordings from this event are available here.

For more information, please contact the authors.