Peter D. Van Oot, Downs Rachlin Martin

Specializing in Environmental Law

We’ve selected six Lawyers of the Year for portraits and to share trends in their legal specialties and a quotation that has inspired them in their work.

Notable trend: My practice encompasses a wide range of environmental issues. In the hazardous waste/Superfund area, there is a trend away from dealing with standard hazardous waste sites with understood pollutants to more challenging sites with more esoteric pollutants, such as the perfluorinated chemicals PFOA and PFOS. Now there is also more attention focused on less-direct exposure pathways, such as vapor intrusion from contaminated sites. In the land use development area, matters are also becoming more complex and, at times, more contested with more emphasis as well on brownfield redevelopment projects.