{"id":1185,"date":"2021-04-01T11:50:33","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T11:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.law.fordham.edu\/elr\/?p=1185"},"modified":"2021-04-01T11:50:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T11:50:33","slug":"spotlight-series-1-jess-phelps-process-balance-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/?p=1185","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight Series #1: Jess Phelps – Process, Balance, Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Michael Albalah, Managing Editor, Fordham Environmental Law Review <\/em><\/p>\n

Jess Phelps is associate general counsel<\/a> at The Lyme Timber Company LP (\u201cLyme\u201d), a private timberland investment manager, based in Hanover, New Hampshire. He also is an adjunct professor at the Vermont Law School.\u00a0\u00a0 When I reviewed his professional experience in preparation for our conversation I couldn\u2019t help but notice that he has operated within the main constituencies relevant to environmental law (clerkship, large and small law firm settings, non-profit work, service as an agency attorney, and now working in-house). After clerking and working in Big Law, he worked in-house at Historic New England, and as an Attorney-Advisor in the USDA\u2019s Office of General Counsel in the Natural Resources and Environment Division, in Washington DC.\u00a0 But throughout his career, he has continued to consistently produce highly regarded contributions to scholarship<\/a> with articles published at the some of the most elite environmental law journals.<\/p>\n

Jess shared his personal relationship with natural resources and tied it to our universally shared story of national public conservation efforts.\u00a0 He grew up on a working farm and identified the role of \u00a0\u2018place\u2019 as being central to his career and scholarship.\u00a0 That experience informed his sense that conservation and working land need not always exist in tension.\u00a0 His professional life mirrors these principles as Jess has worked to steward both public and private land.\u00a0 That makes him particularly suited to help me understand how best to serve our common natural resources.<\/p>\n

In his \u2018day job\u2019, Jess helps the Lyme Timber Company LP manage approximately 1.5 million acres of forestland and rural real estate.\u00a0 Lyme specializes in the negotiation and sale of working forest conservation easements that restrict development on lands but they also generate revenue form sources such as sustainable<\/a> timber harvesting, recreational leasing and the sale of forestry-based carbon-offsets.\u00a0 They also work with conservation partners to permanently conserve targeted high-priority conservation lands.<\/p>\n

As noted, before Jess joined Lyme he was already working on some of the same issues. Post-clerkship and after working in a large law firm, he worked to preserve historic properties \u00a0at Historic New England,\u00a0\u00a0 the oldest and largest regional preservation organization<\/a> in the United States.\u00a0 As part of their historic preservation<\/a> mission they acquire and steward conservation easements on historic properties and landscapes dating from the seventeenth century through the buildings of the mid-century modern movement.\u00a0 It was here that Professor Phelps both did traditional law work, but also participated in the decision making of the organization.\u00a0 He learned that he enjoyed the added responsibility of shaping strategy and being part of an executive team.<\/p>\n

Jess next worked in the United States Department of Agriculture.\u00a0 In his role as attorney-advisor in the Office of General Counsel, Natural Resources and Environment Division he worked on implementing the Agricultural Act of 2014 or the \u201c2014 Farm Bill\u201d specifically with the Natural Resources Conservation Service and Forest Service. \u00a0\u00a0I found it interesting that here he began to really understand how conservation policy is ultimately developed and implemented.<\/p>\n

Three specific recommendations stuck with me from our conversation.<\/p>\n

First, it isn\u2019t necessary or even always possible to start working in environmental law right away. Jess first had a clerkship and then worked as a litigation associate before landing a position in this area. He credits showing interest in this area and building a professional network as allowing him to successfully build a career in environmental law.<\/p>\n

Second, write, write, and write some more.\u00a0 Jess tries to stick to a\u00a0 daily writing schedule where he writes in the morning for about half of the days of the week and one day on the weekend.\u00a0 This means he\u2019s always learning.\u00a0 Additionally, published work demonstrates interest and he thinks young lawyers should write to build subject matter expertise.\u00a0 Lastly, it also provides a good professional network that helped land him at Lyme Timber and as an adjunct at Vermont Law.<\/p>\n

And third, Jess shared a behind-the-scenes perspective of the hiring process for many environmental law-related jobs.\u00a0 He said employers get many applications but quickly toss the ones that aren\u2019t tailored, even if they come from elite or competitive candidates.\u00a0 He stressed that if you can demonstrate interest, and you communicate that interest, you could land a job where you might not think you are competitively advantaged.\u00a0 He cautioned against expressing general interest; don\u2019t use your cover letter to just tell how much you care (such as indicating an interest in hiking\/being outdoors), but also use it to show specific things you did that demonstrate your interest in environmental law as a career (involvement with an environmental journal, participation in the environmental law society, coursework, etc.).<\/p>\n

It might take time, but if you do good work, use writing to build expertise, develop and use your network, you can often get to the job you want.\u00a0 You often need to cultivate a career in environmental law over time.\u00a0 That\u2019s not unlike the strategy needed for sustainable land management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Albalah, Managing Editor, Fordham Environmental Law Review Jess Phelps is associate general counsel at The Lyme Timber Company LP (\u201cLyme\u201d), a private timberland investment manager, based in Hanover, New Hampshire. He also is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fordhamlawelr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}