Our Women’s History Month series continues with an interview with Nixon Peabody partner Alison Torbitt. Learn more about Alison’s professional journey and career milestones in our attorney spotlight.
Tell us a little about yourself, your practice, and your leadership roles at NP.
I am a home-grown environmental partner in our San Francisco office, starting as a summer associate after working as an aquatic ecotoxicologist (scientist) prior to law school. I specialize in environmental transactions, compliance counseling, enforcement defense, and CERCLA/RCRA litigation. I am currently the Environmental team co-leader and on the firm’s Professional Personnel Committee. I am active in the Women’s Resource Group, serving as the California regional lead for the past three years. I am also the firm lead for Legally Green, our sustainability initiative helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
How is your practice group making an impact in your clients’ industries?
Our Environmental team helps to spot and mitigate environmental risk for our clients’ businesses and to protect their real property interests. When utilized correctly, we serve as the first barrier to our clients potentially taking on millions of dollars in environmental liabilities. Often, we are the solution-makers, negotiating environmental holdbacks, locating environmental insurance, identifying and litigating against potentially responsible parties, and facilitating applications for oversight, grants, and other governmental protections to allow clean-up of the dirty dirt for beneficial reuse.
What is a specific project or recent success that made you particularly proud?
We are assisting an Oakland residential real estate developer to redevelop an abandoned former Big O auto care, which had become a homeless encampment, into 166 studios near public transportation, with 51% designated affordable. We helped guide multiple consultants to complete the investigation, both on- and off-site, and then facilitated the excavation and proper off-site disposal of contaminated soil, including an unanticipated underground storage tank. We also helped identify potential funding sources to reimburse for remediation costs, including state funds.
Why do you do the work you do?
Taking dirty dirt—especially when the pollution is migrating off-site into the groundwater, neighboring streams, and/or indoor air of neighbors—and facilitating its clean-up and transformation into much-needed housing that is safe for future occupants and raises all property values and community health. I love finding solutions that are financially feasible and leave the environment better.
Are there shared goals and values that drive the successful relationship between you and your clients?
Cleaning up the environment! No one wants to pollute—even when emergencies occur and something spills into the ocean or a river, our clients generally want to fix it. I love helping them to timely notify the required authorities, hire capable consultants and engineers to draft a cleanup plan, and implement that plan to closure. If done correctly, our clients can avoid bad press and substantial penalties and find ways to avoid a repeat of the accident.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to women just starting their legal careers?
Speak up and be you! A mentor taught me that our job is to make our clients look good, thinking of creative solutions that allow our clients to be successful to their bosses, boards, investors, and customers. A good attorney makes their clients’ lives easier, foreseeing and preventing significant risk while finding practical solutions before the client even knows to ask. To do this successfully, it takes the entire team contributing strategically with their own authentic perspective and experiences. Our authenticity makes us better attorneys. And don’t forget to have fun and send sunshine whenever possible.
