The Firm's many environmental health and safety services are briefly summarized below.
Multimedia Environmental Health & Safety Auditing
The Firm performs environmental health & safety audits as one of its premier services. Its attorneys, professionals and technicians are uniquely educated and experienced to provide the highest quality audits at reasonable cost.
Our goal is to add significant value to our clients' programs. Most of our work entails environmental multi-media audits. However, we often perform single media audits, combine environmental and health & safety audits, review environmental management systems, and perform Department of Transportation audits.
We can combine all of these into a fully comprehensive environmental health & safety compliance and management systems audit. We have audited hundreds of industrial facilities ranging from those in the automotive, chemical, pharmaceutical, utility, paper, waste recycling and disposal, and transportation industries to those in the food, beverage, and consumer products businesses.
International Multimedia Environmental Health & Safety Auditing
In addition to our national auditing practice, the Firm supports corporate client programs internationally. Typically, the Firm forms an appropriate team with the client and in-country resources to provide a thorough and comprehensive review. We have audited throughout
Central and South America, Mexico, Canada and the Orient.
Commercial Transaction Due Diligence
Related to our environmental auditing practice, the Firm provides legal and technical environmental guidance to clients considering complex commercial transactions including corporate mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. We review the proposed transaction and provide our insights about the contract language and about the physical properties after visiting the transaction site. As a result, the Firm provides turn-key services to take the client from start to finish through the transaction.
Compliance Counseling and Regulatory Projects
The Firm also supports its clients by enhancing their environmental health and safety compliance and management systems programs. We provide traditional support such as SPCC Plan drafting or review, waste management counseling, and permitting assistance. The Firm also provides insight into complex and unique compliance issues like proper PCB handling and disposal, lead paint issues, remediation assistance, beneficial reuse of boiler ash, and the implications of used oil separation techniques. In any case, we provide the legal and technical analyses necessary to thoroughly advise our clients toward common sense compliance solutions.
Environmental Self-Management Support and Training
Many of our clients manage their own environmental health and safety programs. However, in today's environment, personnel resources often are at a premium. Consequently, our clients find themselves in need of regular compliance oversight and training. We support these self-directed programs through regular program reviews, hands-on compliance support, providing necessary training to management and performance staff, and by custom designing compliance management tools, checklists and programs to assist and increase the efficiency of the compliance personnel so they can focus their attention on the day-to-day business needs.
Superfund Litigation
The Firm also provides traditional Superfund litigation support. It recently successfully represented clients in the Skinner Landfill Litigation. One client was released from the litigation as a potentially responsible party in exchange for a minimal payment of less than five thousand dollars.
Compliance Enforcement Matters
The Firm also represents clients who have received notices of violation and/or consent orders from federal, state or local regulatory agencies. We are uniquely positioned to understand the technicalities of the agency's complaint and the legal arguments supporting (or absent from) the allegations. We have been involved in Ohio and Kentucky hazardous waste, air, SARA, and Clean Water Act complaints.
Fee Arrangements
The Firm offers its clients the skills and experience of environmental attorneys as well as other professional and technical specialists, at rates that are competitive with firms which do not offer the benefits of such legal talent. The Firm is flexible in designing its fee arrangements with its clients. As in our audit work, the Firm is willing to work on a project-by-project basis at a not-to-exceed price, or to provide services on an ongoing basis under a more traditional hourly rate. Standard hourly rates are set according to the nature and volume of the work, and the skill level of the attorneys or technical professionals involved. When representing a corporation as a plaintiff, the Firm is willing to consider a mixed or "blended" fee agreement under which the Firm shares the risk of the litigation with the client and is paid an hourly rate; the two types of fees are "blended" into one fee arrangement, and the contingency percentage or hourly rate or both are reduced to arrive at a fair fee agreement depending on the circumstances. The Firm is flexible, open to suggestions and novel approaches, and is willing to work with the client and the client's legal department.
[ return to top ]
| 