Jennie Morawetz is the strategy and operations partner for Kirkland’s ESG & Impact practice, responsible for overseeing the day-to-day management of the practice to ensure it delivers on its promise of integrating cutting-edge legal counseling on ESG & impact into Kirkland’s top-tier transactional and litigation practices. Her responsibilities include tracking ESG market, legal, and regulatory trends (including leveraging data generated by Kirkland’s transactional practice), training, substantive client outreach on emerging legal and compliance issues, and the development of innovative legal service offerings. Jennie also provides legal advice to clients on complex ESG and climate issues at all stages of the investment and operational life cycles. Clients value Jennie for her attention to detail, thoroughness, and ability to understand and clearly explain complex issues in a “big picture” way, while offering practical solutions that align with their business goals.

Prior to assuming her current role, Jennie was a partner in Kirkland’s Environmental practice, where she counseled clients in all areas of environmental law across a range of industries. She has provided environmental counseling to private equity and public company clients in hundreds of corporate transactions, worked with clients to identify and evaluate pending and proposed environmental regulatory changes that could impact their business decisions, and helped clients assess and address potential environmental liability, including in connection with crisis events, and negotiated a number of complex environmental insurance policies. She has also developed approaches for integrating the evaluation of climate change risk into the environmental due diligence process, particularly for transactions focused on energy and infrastructure assets, and is a thought leader on this topic as well as other ESG and environmental topics.

Prior to starting her career at Kirkland in 2015, Jennie served as a law clerk to the Hon. Sharon L. Gleason on the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska and the Hon. Morgan B. Christen on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. At Kirkland, in addition to her ESG & Impact and Environmental practices, Jennie has represented individuals in immigration, habeas, and veteran’s benefit proceedings and assisted NGOs with conservation efforts on the East Coast, in the Rocky Mountain West, and in Alaska.