Blog — Around the water cooler

Each week we will be profiling a legal happening or news in the law community.

Levenfeld Pearlstein announced that James D. Brusslan, head of the firm’s environmental law service group, became the only practicing Illinois lawyer to be accredited by the U.S. Green Building Council as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional (LEED AP).

The LEED Green Building Rating System is a third-party certification program and the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings.

LEED APs are professionals who demonstrate a thorough understanding of green building practices and principles and a familiarity with LEED requirements, resources and processes. (www.gbci.org and www.usgbc.org)

As an environmental lawyer, Brusslan said he sees it as his duty to give his real estate clients the best information and advice possible about environmental requirements, the advantages of having a green building, and the steps to certification, if that is something they are interested in doing. He wanted to be familiar with what appears to be a standard that many of his construction clients are using.

“If you want to be effective with your clients as a lawyer than you have to understand the industry,” he said.

Brusslan took an 80-question test last week, and found out the same day that he passed. He said the environment has always been important to him. Most people do not realize the effect that buildings have on the environment, he said.

According to the U.S. Green Building Council, in the U.S. alone, buildings account for 65 percent of the electricity consumption, 36 percent of energy use, 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, 30 percent of raw materials use, 30 percent of waste output, and 12 percent of potable water consumption.

“I went to law school for the purpose of doing positive things for the environment,” he said. “I do a lot of work defending the environment. I bring citizens’ suits. I counsel our clients to do the right thing. Now that people are understanding the importance of taking environmental measures, it’s great because I’m helping companies to now do positive things.”