Industries

• Energy
  • Oil, Gas & Minerals
• Manufacturing
  • Industrials

Practices

• Environmental

Biography

Janet has practiced law for over 30 years with extensive experience in environmental law. She is skilled in environmental programs where science and law intersect, having worked many years as a chemical engineer. Her strong technical background allows her to help clients solve their legal problems and achieve their business objectives in any context in which environmental legal issues arise.

Janet has represented clients in various industries, including oil and gas exploration and production and midstream operations, natural gas transmission, refining, chemicals, electronics, construction, insurance, and real estate development. She advocates on behalf of clients’ interests in administrative proceedings and federal and state courts in government enforcement actions, citizen suits, permit appeals (both permittee and third-party), and rulemaking challenges. She also provides legal advice to clients in environmental incident response, release reporting, and cleanup of contaminated properties, whether voluntary or compelled by government order.

Janet is highly experienced in the environmental aspects of mergers and acquisitions and real estate transactions, having conducted environmental due diligence and negotiated the terms of agreements allocating environmental liabilities and remediation responsibilities among buyers, sellers, insurers, contractors, and other parties in hundreds of transactions involving industrial facilities, commercial properties and brownfields. She also assists clients in interpreting past environmental agreements and supporting litigation of legacy environmental issues under existing agreements.

After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, Janet worked for eleven years as a chemical engineer for Exxon, where she worked in the company’s refining, oil and gas exploration and production, and supply logistics departments. Following law school at the University of Texas, Janet practiced law for more than twenty years in Austin and Houston, Texas, as a partner in a global law firm and as senior environmental counsel with an integrated natural gas exploration, production, and transmission company. She came home to Pittsburgh in 2011, where she maintains a national practice in environmental law.