In 34 years of practicing environmental and maritime law, Harlan has always been the kind of attorney who gets out from behind his desk, puts on boots and walks the client’s site or factory floor or dons a float coat and boards a vessel to see his client’s technology in use at sea. He believes the best way to advise a client on siting a facility, complying with environmental or maritime regulations, resolving enforcement matters, re-developing a brownfield site, or structuring a transaction is get to know the client’s business: how it works and its business goals – so he may then stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the client in helping realize those goals. Harlan’s long-time clients understand and expect this. When the environmental vice president at one of Harlan’s client companies enrolled in a British Standards Institution course covering the implementation of ISO-14000 series environmental management systems, he called Harlan and said “of course you’ll take the course with me?” The only lawyer and non-engineer in the course, after several, study-intensive 14 hour days, Harlan passed the examination and became certified in that discipline.
Harlan feels strongly that it’s important to impart to the next generation of environmental lawyers the lessons he’s acquired by his participation in major appellate and other court cases which helped shape the law of coastal development, environmental impact reporting, water and air quality, and wetlands protection, including over fifteen years as a lead counsel in the matters dealing with the cleanup of Boston Harbor. He does this in part by serving as an adjunct professor for the Law Schools at Boston College and at Roger Williams University. He has also written and taught courses in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. His writings include all editions of the Fisheries and Wildlife Law chapter in MCLE’s Massachusetts Environmental Law treatise. In 2011, University of Maine will publish Maritime Cabotage Laws and Wind Power Installations in the Gulf of Maine, a chapter co-authored by Harlan.Since 2001, Harlan has also exercised his environmental and maritime skills as an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. His duties include the pre-arrival screening and shipboard inspections of foreign flag vessels for Sector Boston Port State control. If you want to see Harlan in his real “habitat”, however, watch for him fishing with his son Ryan, sailing with his wife Kathy or simply hanging out in the woods with Lucy, the family setter.