International law firm Vinson & Elkins sees untapped billable hours in renewable energy and is therefore opening a new office in Palo Alto, Calif., to capture a slice of this growing market.
The office is opening with three partners and will be managed by Boyd Carano who has moved to Northern California from the firm’s Houston office. Kyle Fox and Margaret Sampson of Austin have also joined Carano in Palo Alto. Fox has extensive experience advising early-stage companies and Sampson is a partner with Vinson & Elkins’s intellectual property practice.
Carano tells us that the firm could add a partner and three or four associates by the end of the year.
Law firms have been staffing up with environmental/greentech lawyers, (see here and here), although a lot of the hiring has been in Washington, which these days is the epicenter of cleantech funding, with the Department of Energy overseeing nearly $40 billion in dedicated funds.