In a full page feature, The Journal Record spotlighted the firm's newly established Renewable and Sustainable Energy Industry Group, led by veteran attorneys Richard Riggs and Mary Ellen Ternes and composed of 21 McAfee & Taft attorneys from various disciplines.
“We’re bringing a diverse group together to focus on a particular industry,” Riggs told The Journal Record.
This new industry group is designed to enhance client service in new and traditional energy fields, while allowing the involved lawyers to take advantage of each other’s expertise in litigation as well as in environmental, real estate, commercial transaction, tax, corporate, securities, intellectual property and employment law, the article reported.
Ternes told The Journal Record the group will serve as an ongoing team, ready to address renewable and sustainable energy projects.
“It’s got great experience,” she said. “It allows us to formalize that, hone it and sharpen it.”
Riggs said that the timing of the group’s formation is especially important given the likely emergence of stricter standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and incentives to encourage use of alternate energy resources, the article stated.
Ternes said the renewable/sustainable energy area is one of the fastest growing, after years of foot-dragging. The ideas of energy conservation, reducing pollution and cutting down on waste are not new, she said, but are merging with new approaches such as sustainability, the article stated.
“We can develop great strategies to the whole issue of energy production and energy use,” she said.
As an example of what the industry group could bring to the table, Riggs used wind energy as just one example.
“It’s not purely leasing land for wind farms,” he said in the article. “It also potentially involves tax issues. There are a lot of tax issues, and will be more evolving as we see more tax incentives and various things come down the pike.”
Ternes told The Journal Record that the industry group will allow the firm to help clients look at projects from the ground up, from their development to funding, location, structure and other issues and how they fit into energy-production goals.
“It has to be a team-based approach, so the client can really benefit from a one-stop shop,” she said.