Energy Biz - July/August 2008 - (Page 86) » legal eagle Raising the Bar Law association PrePares for chaLLenges ahead By darreLL deLamaide You don’t have to be a member of the Energy Bar Association to practice energy law, but it helps. “It’s clearly helpful — it gives you a chance to meet with people you’re going to be dealing with outside a situation that is adversarial,” says Jason Leif, a partner at Jones Day and past president of the group’s regional chapter in Houston. “It carries over into your practice — you have those relationships you wouldn’t have otherwise.” The Energy Bar Association, which is affiliated with the American Bar Association, is a voluntary, nonprofit organization, so it’s not like a state bar or the Supreme Court bar, which you have to join if you want to practice law in that jurisdiction. Rather, it provides a forum to bring together lawyers who are all focused on the same issues, notes newly installed association president Donna Attanasio, partner at White & Case in Washington. “Networking is one of the primary benefits,” she says. Meeting other lawyers in an informal setting pays off when you see them again across a negotiating table or in a courtroom. “Things tend to go a little better if you know someone on the other side,” she says. This is true even in a city-focused chapter like Houston, says Leif. “No matter how many opportunities you have to run into people, the sheer number of people getting together doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else,” he says. The EBA brings together a cross-section of lawyers in different types of practice — litigation, transaction, financial, appellate, corporate — that may not happen NewsFlash in the normal course of Iowa NIxes MuNIs business, Leif says. The Iowa Utilities But that’s not all. The Board has told five EBA’s primary mission is communities that they should forget about to educate its members leaving Alliant Energy about the practice of energy subsidiary Interstate Power and Light Co. to law — and as regulation set up municipal utilities, in the industry intensifies, according to Public many more lawyers are Power Weekly. Too many risks feeling the need for this type would be posed by the of educational assistance. change, the regulators told the cities of Everly, Membership is soaring and Kalona, Rolfe, Terril and has already surpassed the Wellman. 86 E n E rgyB i z 2,600 target the organization had set for 2010, compared with fewer than 1,900 in 2000. One of the reasons for the increase is a conscious effort by the association to recruit members outside of Washington, Attanasio says. “We’ve wanted to become more regionally diverse, so we’re not just talking to ourselves in Washington,” she says. The group, founded in 1946 as the Federal Power Bar Association, had evolved into the Federal Energy Bar Association by 2000, when it changed its name to its current form. Dropping the word “federal” signaled the group’s desire to reach out beyond lawyers who practice before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to those who appear before state commissions, as well as to attorneys in transactional, marketing and trading practices, Attanasio says. Donna Attanasio, right, meets with Joseph Nelson and Angela M. O’Connor, co-chairs of the Energy Bar’s Northeast chapter. Photo By MichElE DuEhring The group has six regional chapters — for the Northeast, Midwest, Southern and Western regions as well as two city-based chapters in Houston and New Orleans. While the national association organizes two main events in the spring and fall, the regional chapters hold their own events. In March, for instance, the Houston Chapter hosted a presentation from Susan Court, the chief enforcement officer for FERC. Court brought the attendees up to date on the agency’s efforts to beef up its enforcement staff and implement the new enforcement authority it received under the energy act of 2005. Among other things, the regulator explained how the agency got around to its recently released changes in the Standards of Conduct — switching from a focus on a company’s relationship to its affiliates to a more functional approach looking at the activity of each individual. The company-focused approach had been July/August 2008 http://www.energycentral.com
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