Posted on November 29, 2012 by Michael McCauley
Author’s Note: I wrote this piece at the request of my firm earlier this year. It appeared in the “Diversity Blog” on our firm’s website around “earth Day” in April, 2012. After attending the ACOEL Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. this past week, I know that many other College Fellows share my sentiments about the field we have been fortunate enough to practice law in during our careers.
I have been practicing environmental law at Quarles & Brady (in Milwaukee WI), in one form or another, since I joined the firm as a brand new attorney in 1977. Charlie Kamps was kind enough to be my mentor in the early days, and he gave me many opportunities to work with him on Clean Air Act issues. Over the years, I have been heavily involved in virtually all aspects of environmental law, but my work under the federal Clean Air Act became a real specialty. Among colleagues around the country who specialize in this area of the law, we often (somewhat sarcastically) refer to ourselves as “Air-Heads.”
Working in environmental law has been very exciting. When I started out, Charlie and I were really the only two attorneys in the firm who devoted most of our practice time to environmental law. [There were many others in the firm who handled environmental litigation cases, such as the important Illinois v. Milwaukee Clean Water Act case which Quarles & Brady won in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981. But those lawyers did not normally do environmental work on a day-to-day basis for a large number of firm clients.] In the early 1980’s, the environmental practice area exploded with the passage of the federal Superfund Law and its eventual impact on virtually all corporate transactions, lending work and real estate ventures. Quarles & Brady’s Environmental Practice Group grew to nearly thirty lawyers (in seven offices and four states) by the late 1990’s.
For most of those years (from 1986 to 2007), I rode the wild, environmental-law-growth “roller coaster” as Chair of the firm’s Environmental Law Group. At the same time, I was involved in many high stakes cases and transactions. Most of my work centered on air permitting and in defending Clean Air Act enforcement cases. I grew accustomed to living my professional life going at 100 mph on a regular basis. The issues were complex and novel, and I derived immense satisfaction from helping to steer difficult matters to a successful resolution.
The real stakes in environmental law could not be more important — the protection of human health and welfare and the safeguarding of our natural resources for future generations. Many people think that it should be relatively easy to do all that — just “follow the law.” However, our environmental laws do not give precise directions on how this is to be accomplished. The laws set overall goals and prescribe processes by which those goals are to be achieved. But most often, the real requirements of our environmental statutes must be worked out on a case-by-case basis. This requires a complicated balancing of scientific, economic, engineering, legal and political factors. It is this balancing process which I have found exhilarating to be involved in throughout my career.
I am grateful for the opportunity to be involved in this important work. It has given meaning and a sense of real accomplishment to my professional life.
Tags: Clean Air Act, environmental litigation, Quarles & Brady