The balance of power inside New Jersey’s environmental law landscape is entering a significant new phase following the announcement that former New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette has joined Greenberg Traurig as a shareholder in the firm’s Florham Park office. While lateral attorney moves are common throughout the legal industry, this particular transition is being viewed across government, regulatory, infrastructure, energy, logistics, and real estate sectors as one of the most strategically important environmental law developments in New Jersey in recent years.
The move arrives during a period of sweeping transformation across environmental regulation, climate policy enforcement, infrastructure modernization, industrial compliance, and environmental justice litigation throughout both New Jersey and the broader Northeast corridor. As the state continues positioning itself at the forefront of aggressive environmental governance, the arrival of one of New Jersey’s most influential environmental regulators into private practice immediately reshapes the strategic landscape for businesses, developers, manufacturers, logistics operators, infrastructure companies, technology firms, and institutional clients navigating increasingly complex regulatory terrain.
For Greenberg Traurig, bringing LaTourette into the firm signals far more than a standard expansion of legal staffing. It represents a deliberate escalation of the firm’s ambitions within one of the country’s most consequential environmental law markets. New Jersey has increasingly evolved into a national testing ground for environmental enforcement models, climate adaptation policy, flood protection standards, emerging contaminant regulation, sustainable development frameworks, and environmental justice oversight. Any law firm seeking major influence inside modern environmental governance now recognizes New Jersey as a strategically critical battleground.
LaTourette’s background places him directly at the center of that evolving landscape.
As commissioner of the NJDEP from 2021 through 2026, LaTourette oversaw one of the nation’s most expansive and politically influential environmental regulatory agencies, managing an organization with roughly 3,400 employees responsible for environmental oversight, natural resource management, regulatory enforcement, remediation strategy, climate resilience planning, and public health protection across one of America’s most densely developed states.
During his tenure, New Jersey intensified its environmental posture significantly, expanding regulatory frameworks surrounding industrial emissions, flood vulnerability, contaminated site remediation, clean energy transition planning, and environmental justice enforcement. The state also continued developing some of the country’s most aggressive policy approaches toward climate preparedness and long-term sustainability infrastructure.
What distinguishes LaTourette from many former agency heads transitioning into private practice is the breadth of operational authority he exercised while leading the department. His role extended beyond regulatory interpretation into active litigation strategy, multibillion-dollar remediation enforcement, interagency coordination, federal partnership development, and complex infrastructure oversight involving transportation, manufacturing, energy systems, and large-scale redevelopment projects.
Under his leadership, the NJDEP reportedly secured more than $3.5 billion tied to remediation funding and natural resource damage recovery efforts — an extraordinary figure reflecting the increasingly aggressive posture state regulators have adopted toward environmental accountability and corporate liability.
That enforcement history alone carries enormous significance for industries operating within New Jersey’s regulatory environment.
For decades, environmental law was often perceived by outsiders as a specialized compliance discipline operating somewhat separately from broader business strategy. That perception no longer reflects reality. Today, environmental regulation directly influences real estate valuation, infrastructure financing, insurance risk modeling, manufacturing operations, logistics expansion, technology development, energy deployment, municipal planning, and corporate investment strategy across virtually every major sector of the economy.
In New Jersey especially, environmental law has become deeply intertwined with economic development itself.
Flood-risk mapping, groundwater contamination, industrial remediation obligations, stormwater compliance, warehouse expansion scrutiny, transportation emissions regulation, and environmental justice reviews now shape whether projects move forward, stall indefinitely, or become politically untenable altogether. As a result, firms capable of navigating that environment with sophisticated strategic insight are becoming increasingly valuable.
Greenberg Traurig’s decision to deepen its New Jersey environmental platform reflects this evolving reality. The firm’s leadership openly framed LaTourette’s arrival as a defining moment for the office and a major enhancement to its environmental capabilities. The move also reinforces how aggressively national law firms are competing for dominance inside New Jersey’s uniquely influential legal and regulatory ecosystem.
The connection between LaTourette and Philip Sellinger further amplifies the significance of the transition. Sellinger, now co-chair of Greenberg Traurig’s global litigation practice and founding chair of the firm’s New Jersey office, previously collaborated with LaTourette during major federal and state water quality investigations while serving as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.
That prior coordination between federal enforcement leadership and state environmental authority underscores the increasingly interconnected nature of modern regulatory oversight. Environmental matters today rarely remain confined to single-agency disputes. Instead, they frequently involve overlapping state and federal enforcement frameworks, multijurisdictional investigations, infrastructure implications, insurance exposure, and politically sensitive public accountability considerations.
For corporate clients, this complexity creates enormous demand for advisors who understand not only statutory compliance, but also the broader political, operational, and strategic environment surrounding environmental governance.
LaTourette’s expertise appears especially positioned to serve industries currently undergoing massive transformation throughout New Jersey and the Northeast. Greenberg Traurig indicated that his work will focus heavily on sectors including energy, logistics, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, information technology, transportation, manufacturing, and commercial development — all areas facing accelerating environmental scrutiny and evolving regulatory expectations.
The inclusion of artificial intelligence and information technology among those sectors is particularly revealing because it reflects how environmental law itself is rapidly expanding beyond traditional pollution and land-use frameworks. Data centers, energy-intensive AI infrastructure, semiconductor supply chains, battery production, sustainable materials management, and advanced manufacturing facilities are all generating new environmental regulatory challenges requiring sophisticated legal navigation.
New Jersey’s strategic geographic position between New York and Philadelphia, combined with its dense logistics infrastructure and expanding technology economy, places the state directly at the center of many of these emerging disputes and development battles.
Flood resilience is another increasingly dominant factor reshaping the state’s legal and economic environment. Following repeated extreme weather events and mounting climate concerns, New Jersey has aggressively expanded flood safety standards and resilience planning initiatives. Developers, municipalities, transportation agencies, and commercial operators are now confronting stricter environmental review processes and rising adaptation requirements tied to stormwater management, sea-level rise projections, and infrastructure hardening.
Environmental justice enforcement has similarly emerged as one of the most consequential legal frontiers in the state. New Jersey’s environmental justice framework gives regulators significant authority to evaluate how pollution burdens disproportionately impact historically overburdened communities. This has dramatically altered permitting strategies for warehouses, industrial operations, energy facilities, waste management infrastructure, and large-scale commercial projects.
Businesses can no longer evaluate projects strictly through engineering feasibility or economic return alone. Political optics, environmental equity concerns, community activism, public health analysis, and sustainability positioning have become inseparable from development strategy.
LaTourette’s direct involvement in shaping portions of these evolving frameworks during his time at NJDEP gives him unusually deep insight into both regulatory philosophy and enforcement direction moving forward.
That experience becomes especially valuable as industries attempt to anticipate not just current compliance requirements, but future regulatory trajectories. Companies today are increasingly seeking legal advisors capable of interpreting where environmental policy is heading five or ten years from now rather than merely reacting to immediate enforcement actions.
This predictive strategic dimension is becoming one of the defining characteristics of elite environmental law practice.
The broader political environment in New Jersey further intensifies the importance of environmental expertise. State leadership continues prioritizing clean energy transition goals, offshore wind development, sustainable infrastructure investment, transportation modernization, emissions reduction planning, and climate adaptation initiatives. Simultaneously, business groups continue expressing concern about permitting timelines, operational costs, regulatory uncertainty, and economic competitiveness.
That tension between aggressive environmental policy and economic growth strategy now defines much of New Jersey’s modern political economy.
Law firms positioned at the intersection of those competing pressures are increasingly functioning not merely as litigation advisors, but as long-term strategic architects helping clients navigate politically volatile operating environments.
LaTourette himself emphasized the combination of local depth and national reach in discussing the move to Greenberg Traurig. That positioning matters because environmental disputes today often transcend state boundaries entirely. Supply chains, infrastructure systems, energy markets, federal oversight, and climate risks increasingly operate across interconnected regional and national frameworks.
New Jersey’s role within that system continues expanding.
Whether the issue involves contaminated site remediation, PFAS and emerging contaminant regulation, transportation emissions, industrial redevelopment, warehouse expansion, renewable energy infrastructure, coastal resilience, or sustainable materials management, New Jersey is repeatedly finding itself at the center of national legal and regulatory debates.
That reality is transforming the state into one of the country’s most influential environmental law arenas.
LaTourette’s move into private practice therefore reflects more than a career transition. It symbolizes the growing convergence of government enforcement experience, climate policy evolution, infrastructure transformation, and corporate environmental strategy into a single increasingly powerful legal ecosystem.
And as environmental regulation continues reshaping the future of real estate, logistics, manufacturing, technology, transportation, energy, and economic development across the region, the firms and leaders capable of navigating that complexity are poised to become some of the most influential players in New Jersey’s next era of growth and transformation.
