Monday, July 29, 2002
Page 3
Land Use Lawyer Carlyle W. Hall Joins Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld
By NAZANIN AGANGE, Staff Writer
Carlyle W. Hall, one of the first Los Angeles lawyers to specialize in representing citizens’ groups in environmental matters, is leaving the firm he co-founded to join the Los Angeles office of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, expanding the firm’s Project and Infrastructure Development Department.
Hall, 59, will join 70 other Akin Gump attorneys practicing in the Project and Infrastructure Development department in four other offices as the head of the Los Angeles office practice on Aug. 1. He will be one of nearly 60 partners in the Los Angeles office.
Hall leaves Hall & Henderson, which he launched in 1993.
“I have worked closely with Akin Gump lawyers for several years,” Hall said in a statement. “I believe that no group of lawyers anywhere better understands the process of permitting and entitling major development projects.”
The chair of the firm’s Project and Infrastructure Development practice, Jeffrey L. Stanfield, described Hall’s addition as a complement to the practice.
He said in a statement:
“This is a huge step forward in California, for out department and fore our firm. When Carlyle decided that he wanted to move to a national firm, we knew immediately that he was the lawyer we wanted to head our Los Angeles group. There is no more knowledgeable or highly regarded environmental and land use lawyer in California than Carlyle Hall. His advocacy efforts have helped shape environmental law in California for nearly 30 years.”
In 1971, Hall co-founded the Center for Law in the Public Interest, one of the country’s first such organizations, with Brent Rushforth, John Phillips, and Ric Sutherland, his colleagues from O’Melveny & Meyers where he worked from 1969 to 1971. He served as the center’s co-director until 1988 and currently serves as chairman of its board.
A year later, Hall represented the Sierra Club and NAACP before the state Supreme Court where the court ruled, in a landmark environmental decision, that environmental impact reports were required for private development projects as well as public works projects.
Hall continued his work in environmental and land use law with CLIPI representing environmental groups challenging the construction of the Century Freeway—now the Glenn Anderson (105) Freeway. Construction came to a standstill for nearly 20 years, while Hall negotiated to make the state replace the housing destroyed by construction with 8,500 units of affordable housing.
The breakthrough settlement also brought about the construction of the Green Line, which runs down the median of the freeway, and a job and business enterprise program that doubled the number of women and minorities working on any Cal Trans project, according to a release.
Recently, Hall has also represented environmental groups in the conflict with Playa Vista developers in the Ballona Wetlands just south of Marina Del Rey as well as the city of Los Angeles in managing the growth of the Hyperion Sewer Treatment Plant.
Hall served as outside legal counsel for Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that governs LAX, Ontario, Van Nuys, and Palmdale airports, starting in 1996. He advised LAWA on how to manage LAX expansion plans to help avoid the legal problems and delays that the 105 Freeway experienced.
Since Sept. 11, when Mayor James K. Hahn shifted airport priorities from expansion to safety, LAWA has continued to contract Hall through the City Attorney’s Office to create a supplement to earlier plans, a LAWA representative explained.
Hall also founded and chairs People for Parks, an organization committed to improving parks and open spaces in Los Angeles. As a member of Las Virgenes Institute’s board, Hall studies the impacts of urbanization on open space.
Hall graduated from Yale College in 1963 and earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1966.
He has taught constitutional law in the Sudan and Uganda and currently teaches land use law as an adjunct professor at the USC Law Center.
Akin Gump is the 11th largest law firm in Los Angeles with more than 120 attorneys, according to the Los Angeles Business Journals’ “2002 Lists.” Founded in 1945 in Dallas, Tex., by Robert S. Strauss and Richard A. Gump, Akin Gump has more than 1000 lawyers and 10 offices worldwide. The Los Angeles office was founded in 1997.
In 2001, it was identified as the nation’s 10th largest firm by The National Law Journal and the 16th largest international firm by International Financial Law Review.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company