Carolyn Elefant

Carolyn Elefant has been an exceptional attorney for my New York community. Her extensive experience with FERC policy is well known among other prominent attorneys. Without a doubt the progress and successes my community has achieved is due to her hard work, commitment to our case, and expertise in... NEPA Law and the FERC process. She keeps a constant open line of communication and answers any questions her clients may have promptly. She is extremely thorough and the reason my community has a fighting chance!

Our case against the Millennium pipeline would, in my opinion, be lost or at best hanging on by a thread if we hadn't found Carolyn. We had retained a lawyer earlier who did very little except offer advice about what we should be doing early in the process. We were at a key point in our case, she jum...ped in, figured out what had to be done, worked long hours to put together a comprehensive document explaining all of the information/arguments we had raised, citing past decisions that clearly supported our position, and pointed out the procedural errors in FERC's handling of our case to that point. She's responded to every question we've asked, setting up a clear communication system, telling us exactly what she would like to do and why, or what she doesn't think is either worth our time or could backfire. She's never missed a deadline or not had time to get our feedback on anything that she does or submits - and often sends emails in the middle of the night so we have time to get back to her the next day. We now feel that we have a decent chance of winning against the tremendous odds any group faces when they try to stop a gas company from doing something. In my opinion, that is only because we were lucky enough to find her when we badly needed a lawyer who knew what to do and got going on it immediately.

Carolyn Elefant has been a tireless advocate on behalf of our citizens group in certificate proceedings at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in a compression station siting case. Not only is she extremely knowledgeable about the Natural Gas Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, she ...is a brilliant strategist, and a superb writer and speaker. Most importantly, she exhibits a passion for her work that I have rarely seen in my many dealings with attorneys. I am an attorney myself, and have been a client of several different attorneys over the course of my lifetime. In my opinion, Carolyn is the kind of lawyer that all lawyers should strive to be like. She truly is a client's dream attorney. She is trustworthy and ethical. She is responsive, returning phone calls and E-mails promptly. She takes the time to answer questions thoroughly, and keeps us informed of developments in the case. Moreover, she cares about obtaining justice for our group, and has shown her willingness to go the extra mile or two to aggressively represent our interests. If you need a FERC and/or NEPA attorney, you could not go wrong with Carolyn Elefant. I wholeheartedly recommend this outstanding attorney.

I am a resident in Minisink, NY. A 12,260 hp compressor station was proposed to be sited on my road, which is zoned agricultural/residential. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has federal jurisdiction over the project. Our community sought expert counsel from a number of law firms and c...hose Carolyn Elefant. One, generally, does not need an environmental lawyer to get the Commission to mitigate a simple portion of a project. However, if the intent is to win or mitigate key portions of the project, then one needs a more than capable environmental attorney. One needs an able and knowledgeable environmental lawyer for difficult issues. Carolyn Elefant knows how FERC works from the inside because she is a former FERC attorney. Her expertise with the Natural Gas Act, NEPA, APA, and the Commission Policy Statement have been crucial in our fight. Additionally, her expertise with FOIA, Privileged, and CEII material regarding due process rights has also given us an edge in our docket. Carolyn has been very flexible with us in handling our particular situation and the various resident political and business backgrounds has been a challenge but yet she has kept us working as a cohesive team for a common goal. I've been up past 2AM working on responses to Environmental Assessment (EA) and other documents and she has been working on our main response document past 4AM. She does what is needed to get the job done! Recently, we needed Carolyn to file a comprehensive Motion for Stay on our behalf to FERC with only a few days notice; we needed to be nimble with a quick response. Carolyn's quick and thorough motion response shows her agility to respond to the given situation. Only a person, like Carolyn Elefant, with intimate knowledge and expertise on how to respond with appropriate legal cases that backup the key arguments can deliver when it matters most. Another reason we chose Carolyn was in anticipation of a challenge before the U.S. Court of Appeals. Our case is setting precedent at FERC. Due to Carolyn's legal responses our case has drawn a rare FERC 3-2 split decision. Whatever the outcome of our case in the next few weeks, I would whole-heartedly recommend Carolyn Elefant to anyone (and, in fact I have).