Jeffrey A. Smith
Jeffrey A. Smith
Chief Counsel, Green Schools
Alliance; Partner, Crowell & Moring, LLP
Jeff Smith is the partner in charge of the
environmental practice at Cravath, where he works on financings, underwritings
and mergers and acquisitions nationally and internationally in all industries.
The group also provides day-to-day counseling on environmental management and
corporate governance issues, environmental issues of interest to the SEC,
shareholder relations involving environmental matters and environmental
litigation. Jeff
frequently speaks on environmental issues, including guest lectures at Harvard,
Columbia, Penn, Georgetown, NYU, Pace and Vanderbilt law schools. He was the
first Chairman of the ABA’s Special Committee on Environmental Disclosure. He
has written a chapter on SEC disclosure issues in real estate transactions in
the ABA book Environmental Issues in Real Estate Transactions, chapters on SEC disclosure and officers’ and directors’ fiduciary
obligations for the ABA treatise Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, articles in the Review of Securities and Commodities Regulation, the Carbon and Climate Law Review
and the Capital Markets Law Journal on
corporate disclosure relating to climate change, an article on the implications
of global warming on business transactions, published in the N.Y.U. Journal
of Law and Business, and a series of articles
on climate change in the U.S. courts, published in Environmental Liability. In October 2007, Jeff testified before the Senate Subcommittee on
Securities, Insurance and Investment regarding potential SEC requirements for
disclosure relating to climate change. He was cited as being one of the
country’s preeminent environmental
practitioners by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in 2009, 2010 and 2011 and by PLC Which Lawyer? in 2010. Jeff was also recognized for his transactional and regulatory
work in the environmental area by The Legal 500 in 2011. Cravath’s environmental practice received the publication’s
highest ranking for its “great attention to detail, constant availability and fantastic
rapport with clients.” He was also recognized in Who’s Who Legal: The
International Who’s Who of Environmental Lawyers 2009 and The Best Lawyers in America in 2009, 2010 and 2011. He received an A.B. cum laude from Harvard University in 1974 and a J.D. from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1981 where he was a legal writing instructor and president of
the Environmental Law Society. Jeff currently serves on the Board of The Urban
Assembly, the Adams Street Foundation and Environmental Advocates of New York.
He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
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