The firm’s environmental lawyers play an integral role in corporate transactions – evaluating environmental risks, advising on risk management and allocation, and exploring and devising practical solutions to environmental problems. Whether it’s a complex merger or acquisition, a securities offering, a financing or a project development, those skills give Debevoise clients an edge in dealing with environmental challenges.
Team members work closely with environmental consultants, engineers and advisors throughout the world. The result is a practice that is at home with the technical details, highly commercial and, where needed, genuinely creative. The emphasis is on realistically sizing environmental risk and dealing with it in a manner that facilitates clients’ goals and gets transactions completed. The group regularly counsels private equity firms, industrial companies and other businesses in a broad spectrum of industries, including chemicals, mining, packaging and energy.
With years of experience advising clients on both the buy and sell sides of transactions, the team has developed what Chambers USA refers to as “an excellent sense of how to negotiate a deal.” Time and again, all parties in a tough deal look to the Debevoise environmental lawyers for the approach that actually gets the deal done.
The practice also collaborates closely with Debevoise litigators, representing corporations in actions brought by the U.S. government and private parties under CERCLA (Superfund) and other environmental laws. The group advises clients as to their most prudent options in addressing environmental issues and, when appropriate, works with regulatory authorities to resolve matters.