People on the Move

Lauren Bachtel has joined Linklaters in New York City as senior counsel in the firm’s energy and infrastructure and global environmental, social, and governance teams, from Mayer Brown, also in New York. Bachtel represents and counsels energy industry coalitions and individual clients in regulatory and administrative matters at the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service. The coalitions and clients with complex environmental permitting/compliance for projects in a variety of technological and transactions matters. Bachtel is co-chair of the Section’s Special Committee for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

Blaine Bengtson has joined the Environmental and Tort Practice Group at Lathrop GPM LLP in Denver, Colorado, from Jones & Keller PC, also in Denver. His practice focuses on regulatory compliance, transactions, and litigation in environmental law, contaminants and toxic tort claims, and some complex civil litigation. Bengtson is a member of Lathrop’s PFAS team, focusing on state and federal regulatory issues to counsel and represent clients in this new area. He was the 2022–2023 co-chair of the Section’s Energy and Natural Resources Litigation Committee, and he continues his involvement in the Section.

Susan Jane Brown has founded a nonprofit environmental law firm, Silvix Resources, in Portland, Oregon. She was a senior staff attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center, where she directed the Center’s Wildlands Program for 14 years. Brown has taught Forest Law and Policy as a clinical professor, and currently as an adjunct professor, at the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland. In 2021, the Environmental and Natural Resources Section of the Oregon State Bar honored her with its Annual Award for leadership, service, and contributions to the law of natural resources and the environment. Brown is experienced with working with diverse stakeholders, including tribes, timber companies, and the U.S. Forest Service. She is also an experienced litigator in federal public lands forest management involving the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and Oregon and California environmental laws. Brown has served as co-chair of the Federal Advisory Committee for Implementation of the U.S. Forest Service Land Management Planning Rule, and currently serves as co-chair of the Federal Advisory Committee for the Northwest Forest Plan Modernization. She currently serves as the Section’s chair of the Special Committee on Written Content.

Victor Flatt has been appointed the Coleman P. Burke Chair in Environmental Law and the associate director of the Burke Center for Environmental Law at Case Western University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio. He was previously the Dwight Olds Chair in Law and faculty co-director of the Environment, Energy & Natural Resources Center at the University of Houston Law Center. And earlier, Professor Flatt was the inaugural Taft Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. His research and scholarship focus on environmental legislation in climate change, air toxics, and environmental enforcement. He is the Section’s Ethics and the Profession advisor. 

Heather Tanana has been appointed a visiting professor at the University of California Irvine School of Law and continues as an associate faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She recently co-authored “The Unfilled Promise of Indian Water Rights Settlements” in Natural Resources & Environment (“Fire and Water,” Fall 2022). Tanana is the Section’s co-chair of the Indigenous Law Committee.