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New [January 2016] DRI member Kimberly Leue Bick lives and works in Newport Beach, California. In February 2015, she started her own boutique environmental law firm, Bick Law Group. This month, she adds a partner, her husband Alan Bick, a retired-former environmental law partner from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. In addition to Alan and Kim, Bick Law Group includes two additional environmental lawyers: Gabe Padilla and Allison Ross.
Bick Law Group is proud to be a woman-owned business enterprise.
Kim represents clients in complex environmental litigation, including private cost recovery actions, mass and toxic tort defense, defense of agency enforcement actions, rulemaking proceedings, compliance counseling, and corporate and real estate transactions. Her areas of expertise include CERCLA, RCRA, CWA, Prop 65, CEQA, NEPA, ESA, and NRDA. Kim also has experience in cutting edge areas of environmental law, including regulation of greenhouse gases, green chemistry, REACH, e-waste, battery recycling, and packaging. In addition, she advises corporate clients on Global Reporting Initiative programs and other environmental and social responsibility issues, such as responsible sourcing, supply chain transparency, responsible manufacturing, and pending shareholder proposals on environmental issues. Her clients are national and multi-national Fortune 500 companies and her work crosses the globe including Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii, Arizona, New York, Vermont, Maine, Minnesota, Washington, D.C., the EU, Mexico, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and China.
Kim has been practicing environmental law since she graduated from Stanford Law School in 1990. Prior to attending law school, Kim earned both her M.S. in Civil Engineering and her B.S. in Environmental Earth Sciences from Stanford University. She then enjoyed being the client of environmental lawyers, as one of the first environmental engineers for McDonnell Douglas Corporation (now Boeing Co.) handling all compliance programs and regulatory matters at the Southern California manufacturing facilities. Her responsibilities included air, waste, water, spill reporting, and Superfund cleanups.
After graduating from Stanford Law School, with distinction, Kim clerked for Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, and then stayed in D.C. to work as an associate at Covington & Burling. Since then she has worked as an environmental law associate at Morrison & Foerster in Irvine, CA, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Irvine, CA, and as the head of the Environmental Practice Group at Irell & Manella, LLP, in Newport Beach, CA. During the course of her career, she also took some time off to focus on being a mom to her two children, Katie and Jack, both now in college.
Fun facts about Kim: She’s addicted to the Real Housewives franchise (especially RHWOC) and frequently runs into her neighbors Heather Dubrow and Shannon Beadore (and, like a stalker-fan, she always acts like she knows them and says “howdy neighbor,” which they ignore). Her favorite thing to do is paddle out on her surfboard past the break and just lie on her board soaking up the sun before paddling back in (her version of “surfing”). She is a recovering, self-professed and unapologetic “snowplow mom” (a snowplow mom doesn’t just hover, she clears all obstacles in the way). She has a Certificate in Dredging Studies from Texas A&M (not too many lawyers can say that) and she’s almost completed a Certificate in Winemaking from UC Davis (and when she eventually does, you will find her working as a cellar rat somewhere in Sonoma). And finally, she loves DRI, having just discovered the amazing WITL at the Scottsdale conference this year. So happy to be a new member!