Law Beyond the Obvious: Environmental Law Careers

• Katie de Kauwe, Environmental Lawyer, Friends of the Earth

Katie is an environmental lawyer working primarily on public law actions on issues of environmental justice, and legal challenges concerning protest rights in the context of environmental campaigning. Katie has significant experience of strategic climate litigation, and worked on Friends of the Earth’s Heathrow JR which went to the Supreme Court in October 2020. Katie is currently acting for Friends of the Earth on its legal intervention in the Sarah Finch/ Horse Hill oil challenge, which goes to the Court of Appeal in November 2021, and has also been working on the Whitehaven coal mine planning inquiry.

• Anne Harrison, Legal Director (Barrister),  DAC Beachcroft.

Anne was called to the Bar in 1992 and is a legal director (barrister) in the real estate department of DAC Beachcroft's Bristol office. She is a member of the firm's national safety health and environment team and specialises in regulatory compliance and environmental law matters and planning. Previously, Anne was in-house counsel at the Environment Agency, advising on the statutory powers, duties and responsibilities of the agency as regulator, environmental regulation, waste management, the contaminated land regime, land drainage/flood defence and water law, habitats and conservation, town and country planning, environmental impact assessment, and other UK and EU environmental legislation.

Anne also spent two years as an environment manager in the Environment Agency, responsible for five operational teams covering waste management, environmental permitting and COMAH regulation, pollution incident response and site inspections, pollution control and radioactive substances regulation, water quality, water level monitoring, and a special enforcement team.

Anne now advises both private and public sector clients, including residential developers and the healthcare sector, on regulatory environmental and planning law matters in both an operational and transactional/due diligence context.

• Sam Bright, Senior Lawyer (Energy), Foundation for International Law for the Environment (FILE)

Sam is an environmental lawyer currently working at the Foundation for International Law and the Environment. His work focuses on using the law to accelerate the energy transition, address climate change and reduce the impacts of pollution on people and planet. He originally trained and practised competition and state aid law at Clifford Chance.  Since then he has also worked with ClientEarth.