Biography • Environment

Laura L Leonard is a partner in Sidley's Chicago office. She focuses her practice on transfers and allocations of environmental risk in a variety of settings. On the transactions side, Ms Leonard has extensive experience identifying and managing sources of environmental risk. This includes coordinating diligence and advising on contractual allocations in a wide variety of merger and acquisition, project finance and alternative energy transactions on behalf of buyers, sellers and lenders, providing structuring advice to minimise successor environmental liability, monitoring financial markets disclosures, assisting with respect to SEC reporting of environmental matters, and counselling with respect to brownfields redevelopment and environmental insurance. She has also advised both creditors and debtors on environmental aspects of bankruptcy, including the discharge of environmental claims, and the sale or purchase of assets out of bankruptcy.

Ms Leonard also handles a variety of regulatory counselling and enforcement matters, including spill reporting and emergency response (particularly with respect to the petroleum and pipeline industries) and has worked on several voluntary disclosure/audit policy penalty mitigation matters. She is also well versed in regulations and industry practices relating to managing asbestos, lead-based paint and mould.

Ms Leonard has lectured frequently on the environmental aspects of business transactions and SEC environmental reporting and is on the advisory board of Bloomberg BNA's Environmental Due Diligence Guide.

Ms Leonard received her JD from Loyola University, Chicago School of Law in 1983 and her AB from the University of California - Davis in 1978. She is admitted in Illinois.