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IN THEIR OWN WORDS
| Senior Counsel |
What is your title?
Senior Counsel, Administrative Litigation
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How long
have you worked at FERC?
24 years
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Education and Professional Experiences that led you to FERC?
I came to FERC right after law school because I wanted to work for a Federal agency and help protect the public. Although I studied French literature in college, I work with accountants, economists, and ratemaking experts, and I have to work with numbers and understand what these people say.
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Describe a typical day.
In a "typical" day I may help my litigation team try to
settle a case, edit legal documents written by the attorneys
I supervise, research an important point of law, and work
on administrative assignments, like hiring new employees
or editing our budget requests. |
What are your primary responsibilities at FERC?
A big part of my job is helping my attorneys and their witnesses get ready to negotiate with parties like electric utilities, state agencies, customers, generators, and power marketers. Often they are fighting about who has to pay the costs of getting electric power from a generator (where the power is made) to customers who will use or resell the power. Some of our cases are very important to making electric markets function properly; this allows customers to shop for cheaper power, and gives generators the right incentives to build power plants in places where they are needed. The issues can be very complicated, and the number of people we have to deal with can be very large. With lawyers, consultants, utility executives, and others attending, there can be anywhere from 6 to 150 people in the room. If we can't get parties to agree, we may have to go to hearing, which is basically a trial in front of a FERC Administrative Law Judge. It is very satisfying when we suggest a fair solution that no one else has thought of, and the parties accept it. This saves them the time and money it would have cost them to go to hearing. Often it lets them work out the details together in a way that works better than what would have come out of a hearing. |
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