Course Description:
This 2-credit course provides an in-depth examination of a set of narrow issues that arise within the practice of environmental law, such as in climate change regulations in California, land use law practice, toxic torts, water regulation, environmental impact assessment under NEPA and CEQA, and environmental due diligence in real estate transactions. The course should be taken by anybody who plans to make environmental or energy law the focus of their career as well as anybody with plans for a general business law practices (since the issues and skills covered in the course will arise in those general business law practice settings). The course objectives are to: 1) familiarize students in-depth and with a relatively narrow focus on a select set of the most common environmental law practice issues that private firm and government lawyers deal with, 2) teach particular skills, such as client counseling, negotiation or drafting of a complaint or a comment letter, utilized by practitioners to address those issues, and 3) directly expose students to practitioners in the field. The course is not a replacement for taking the environmental protection law survey course, but should be taken ideally concurrently with or after the environmental law survey course. However, environmental law is not a prerequisite.
