Green new color for up-and-coming lawyers — and some older ones, too

By Stephanie Tavares

Saturday, Dec. 26, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The renewable energy industry boom is expected to create much-needed jobs for electricians and construction workers in Nevada.

And the green push already is putting more lawyers to work.

Every Public Utilities Commission filing and Bureau of Land Management application is backed by not just a team of engineers and businesspeople but also lawyers with expertise in energy regulations, local and national land use provisions and environmental protection laws.

They call themselves environmental lawyers and their ranks are growing.

Several corporate law firms in the state have expanded their environmental law practices or reassigned lawyers from less-active practices.

Although many real estate and transactional lawyers in Nevada have been laid off in the past year and a half, those with training in energy regulatory law or renewable energy issues are finding work at the states’ biggest firms.

“It used to be that you went to a party and you weren’t supposed to talk about work. We were considered boring,” says Kathleen Drakulich, a longtime environmental attorney with law firm McDonald Carano Wilson. “Today everyone wants to talk about what we do.”

Environmental law is an increasingly popular focus for young lawyers and law students. It’s become so popular that U.S. News & World Report has begun ranking schools’ environmental law programs along with more traditional programs such as legal writing and tax law.

UNLV’s Boyd School of Law didn’t make that list, but it has an “environmental quality law” elective track. The school held a workshop this year for students interested in practicing environmental law after graduation.

“Clean energy, green technologies and environmentalism in general have been ‘in’ the last few years,” says Lionel Sawyer & Collins’ Linda Bullen, another longtime environmental lawyer. “That has created interest in the field among new lawyers.”

What creates even more interest is the prospect of paying work.

Lawyers have suffered with the rest of the workforce as layoffs hit firms across the nation.

In Nevada, dozens of young lawyers lost jobs as law firms merged, and even experienced lawyers couldn’t outrun the downsizing that rolled over transactional and real estate practice groups after the real estate crash. Some law school graduates didn’t find jobs after graduation and are working as public affairs specialists and freelance writers.

But just as a rise in real estate meant a rise in real estate lawyers, a rise in clean energy development means more environmental law work.

That’s true in Nevada, with its green energy quotas for power companies, vast tracks of available land and business friendly regulatory environment.

And as the number of attorneys in environmental law expands, so does the scope of their work. Environmental law once covered only soil, water and air contamination. Eventually the category took in energy lawyers. Today it encompasses everything from green building contract experts to Endangered Species Act specialists.

Melissa Orien of the law firm Holland & Hart is one of this new generation of lawyers. She is an environment lawyer, but she doesn’t help energy developers get permits or fight for tortoise rights. Orien is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, accredited professional. She’s an expert on writing contracts for green building development.

Hers is an emerging area of law where the rules haven’t been written, one that she says will keep her scanning law journals and federal court dockets for decades.

“Trends in the legal community obviously follow trends in business community, and right now green building is a big trend,” she says. “But the issue is it’s an area of law where there seems to be a lot of emerging legal questions that there aren’t established answers for.”

All of these are on one side of the aisle — the business side.

But behind the scenes is a whole world of environmental lawyers — government lawyers advising state and federal agencies, litigators filing class action lawsuits against polluting companies, lawyers working for nonprofit organizations fighting for the interests of endangered species.

The need for more of those lawyers is going to keep growing for the foreseeable future, American College of Environmental Lawyers President Jeffrey Thaler says.

“We’re going to see more regulation and more environmental lawsuits. All of that means there will be a greater need for the skills of an environmental lawyer.”

His 3-year-old organization has about 100 members, with Bullen being the only Nevadan. Membership is by invitation only, so the members are recognized by their peers as pre-eminent in their field. Thaler expects the roster will get longer as the growing ranks of environmental attorneys gain the experience needed for membership.