Mary Lynn Coffee and Thomas Dover Recognized as “2022 Legal Visionaries”
Mary Lynn Coffee and Thomas Dover were recognized by Los Angeles Times B2B Publishing in its “Business of Law: Trends, Updates, Visionaries & In-House Counsel Leadership Awards” supplement for 2022. The supplement highlighted attorneys who have exhibited noteworthy achievements in the past 24 months and developed innovative strategies to help their and clients avoid risk and leverage opportunities.
Mary Lynn was highlighted for successfully negotiating and obtaining NEPA/CEQA clearances and wetlands, water quality and endangered species permits for large public water, transit, transportation, energy and logistics infrastructure projects totaling more than $11.5 billion in capital costs and for more than 28 privately developed master planned communities encompassing more than 95,000 acres throughout California. Of particular note, Mary Lynn is recognized for her instrumental role in obtaining agreements among environmental groups, regulatory agencies and infrastructure agencies to design, construct and operate multi-benefit infrastructure projects.
In the City of Ventura, Mary Lynn was the architect of an agreement among those groups to develop, construct and operate VenturaWaterPure, an indirect potable reuse project that improves habitat for sensitive species in the Santa Clara River Estuary by diverting tertiary treated wastewater discharges to recharge the local aquifer. The project results in habitat improvement for fisheries while also providing a drought resilient, local water supply. In the City of Long Beach, Mary Lynn represents the Port of Long Beach in a transaction to finance the establishment of, and, once established, to purchase coastal salt marsh mitigation bank credits for future use in mitigating adverse environmental effects of Port capital improvement, and operations and maintenance projects. In Northern California, she leads the Nossaman team serving as special environmental counsel to obtain all environmental permits and clearances necessary to seismically retrofit the dam for Santa Clara County’s largest drinking water reservoir. The dam retrofit project will protect citizens of San Jose and Silicon valley from potential future dam failure, while making substantial improvements to endangered species habitat downstream of the dam.
Thomas is noted for “providing cutting-edge legal strategies in all areas of intellectual property, corporate transactions and advertising, including complex system and software transactions, public and government entity IT, financial and operational system procurement and negotiations, and consumer product development, branding, manufacture and distribution.”
Thomas’ representation of “a wide range of clients, including North America’s largest utility, one of the largest energy and communications infrastructure entities in the U.S., and many transportation agencies and toll system operators” is also lauded. Thomas is currently advising the County of Los Angeles in the procurement of a new election management system as well as working with two California retirement associations in the procurement of new pension administration systems.