Gail S. Port

Gail S. Port is the head of the interdepartmental Environmental Group at Proskauer based in the New York office. She has been practicing environmental law, land use and environmental litigation for 40 years. Her practice covers a wide range of environmental matters including counseling clients nationally and internationally on the environmental risks in mergers and acquisitions, real estate transactions and financings; environmental compliance matters; Superfund and RCRA cases; federal and state enforcement proceedings; sustainability and climate change issues; remediation; environmental litigation and administrative proceedings; land use matters; and historic preservation.

Prior to joining Proskauer, from 1984-1989, Gail was the Deputy General Counsel, and Acting General Counsel, and the chief environmental advisor to the New York State Urban Development Corporation, where she was involved in the environmental law aspects of numerous high visibility large-scale land use and development projects and related financing transactions. Before her public service, Gail was an associate at a prominent environmental boutique law firm.

Gail has served as the Chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Environmental Law Section and of the New York City Bar Association’s Environmental Law Committee. She has the honor of being a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, a professional association of national preeminent environmental lawyers with distinguished careers. From June 1992 until 2012, following her initial appointment by Governor Mario Cuomo (and State Senate confirmation), Gail served as one of only five citizen members on the New York State Environmental Board. She was reappointed to the Board twice by Governor Pataki and then served at the pleasure of Governors Spitzer, Paterson and Andrew Cuomo.

Gail has been widely recognized as a leading environmental attorney in many legal directories, including Chambers USA, Best Lawyers in America (in which she was also named New York City Environmental Law Lawyer of the Year in 2012), and New York Super Lawyers (in which she was also named several times as a Top 50 Female Attorney in the NYC Metropolitan Area). Gail has lectured and written widely on a broad spectrum of environmental topics. She also served as an adjunct faculty member of Pace University School of Law, where she taught “Commercial Environmental Law.”