Legal Marketing & PR

Climate Change Law Jobs Heat Up

By lawjobspipeline

Credit crunching and other issues may have slowed down the growth of firms in the financial sector, but the ever-increasing range of new opportunities includes climate change law.  Carbon trading, new climate regulations, environmental iniatives of all types have created a plethora of new opportunities, which younger lawyers are primed to seize. 

At our New Zealand site we recently wrote about local firm Bell Gully’s move into this area.  Chambers Global 2008 ranked the firm as one of the 12 global leaders in climate change and specifically lawyer Simon Watt was identified as one of ten partners worldwide who is regarded as an international expert in climate change law.  The BG blurb says: “He has advised on the development of a legal framework for trading in greenhouse gas emissions and on climate change legislation. He also advises businesses both domestically and internationally, on carbon trading and on the implications of the Kyoto Protocol and New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme.”

In the U.S. Senate began deliberation of the Climate Security Act of 2008 ? a bill which calls for capping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, transportation and industrial sources with the goal of significantly reducing greenhouse gases.  A growing number of law firms are advertising experience in climate change issues and some have already begun expanding this practice area.  We noted that legal research firm A.E. Feldman, says attorney jobs are opening up for professionals with expertise in carbon finance and environmental law.

 Among the international firms noted by Feldman’s were Venables LLP (”recently announced that it has expanded its Environmental Group, consisting of more than 20 attorneys.”);  Sullivan & Worcester (”recently announced that it has formed a Climate Change Group to address a variety of business, legal and risk-management issues arising from the global need to preserve and protect the environment.”); Holland and Knight  (”announced the addition of an environmental attorney who works to address environmental compliance, policy strategy and due diligence with an emphasis on legislative and regulatory strategy development to its Public Policy & Regulation Group.”)

Full post as published by Lawyer Marketing Blog on June 07, 2008 (boomark / email).