The growing popularity of the green real estate development movement and increasingly complex
environmental regulations are fueling a growth in environmental law practices for several of Milwaukee’s law firms.
Environmental law practices have changed in the last three to five years, largely because of a more prominent focus on environmental matters in the media and potential legal exposure.
“It’s the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ factor,” said Edward “Ned” Witte, an attorney with Milwaukee-based Gonzalez, Saggio & Harlan LLP. “There is a greater understanding among corporations and citizens that the environment and economy are intertwined. More companies are looking at compliance as a necessity, rather than an inconvenience.”
Gonzalez, Saggio & Harlan started building its environmental team about one year ago, when it hired Witte, who is now a partner in the firm.
The firm’s environmental practice offers corporate clients legal counsel on environmental compliance for transactions, coordination for site cleanup, due diligence, transaction counseling and other environmental services, Witte said.
Clients are increasingly recognizing that environmental compliance can produce cost benefits. That, in turn, is giving law firms with an environmental focus more work.
“There is a recognition that compliance can be cost-effective, with larger companies in particular,” Witte said. “They are realizing that they can be economically productive while complying with environmental laws. And being green is popular. It’s cool to be green.”
Gonzalez, Saggio & Harlan’s environmental law team has four full-time and one part-time attorney. The firm has made a job offer to another environmental attorney, and may add one more attorney in early 2008.
Gonzalez, Saggio & Harlan has offices in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago, Des Moines and Las Vegas. Currently, the firm’s attorneys specializing in environmental law are in Milwaukee, Witte said. However, if the firm found a large corporate client in another city that needed significant environmental services, it may place or seek an attorney with that focus in that market.
Other local firms have developed their environmental practices over time.
Foley & Lardner LLP’s environmental department has grown steadily since the 1970s, said Linda Benfield, chair of the department. When Benfield joined Foley & Lardner in 1989, it had five attorneys with an environmental focus. Today, the firm employs 22 attorneys in that practice across the nation.
“As the area has grown (environmental law), we have grown with it,” Benfield said.
Environmental law today has changed since the early 1990s, she said. Then, environmental lawyers worked predominantly on coordinating the cleanup of federal Superfund sites, as well as trying to interpret recently passed environmental laws. Today, lawyers specializing in environmental work are doing much more.
“Depending on where the economy is, we may be involved in M&A work, environmental due diligence or on the flip side in bankruptcy, either in trying to work with a company on the discharge of their obligations or how they will be managed coming out of bankruptcy,” Benfield said. “Often, the environmental issues are some of the most significant obligations they have.”
Michael Simpson, a shareholder with Reinhart Boerner Van Dueren S.C., said the practice of environmental law has changed because environmental laws themselves have become more complex and flexible.
“Today it calls for sitting down and working with clients and governmental (bodies) and finding innovative solutions to problems,” Simpson said. “Previously, it was end-of-pipe solutions.”
Foley & Lardner’s environmental attorneys have also been involved in litigation, either from governmental organizations or citizen groups, Benfield said.
“In the last five of six years, we’ve seen a lot of action by citizen’s groups, trying to fill what they feel is a void in government enforcement,” she said.
David Ruetz, an attorney with GZA Environmental Inc. and chair of the environmental law section of the Milwaukee Bar Association, has seen growth in the environmental practices at several local law firms in recent years. Attorneys with those firms will likely be busy with toxic tort, environmental due diligence and other matters, he said.
Simpson agreed and said other political hot-buttons, such as carbon footprints, green development standards and greenhouse gas emissions, should give environmentally-focused attorneys plenty to work with in years to come.
“It’s an interesting time to be (an environmental lawyer),” Simpson said. “The laws provide our clients with the ability to be innovative. An environmental lawyer can help clients with this information and help them be successful.”
