Sharon Tomkins
Partner
Sharon Tomkins is a partner in O'Melveny's Los Angeles office and a member of the Energy, Natural Resources & Environmental Practice. She has extensive experience in addressing regulatory, environmental, litigation and appellate issues unique to the energy sector. She also regularly represents non-energy related clients in adversarial environmental matters, including toxic tort claims and private cost recovery actions.
Sharon was recently profiled by the
Los Angeles Business Journal for their Who's Who of Environmental Lawyers and Who's Who of L.A. Law special sections in 2008. She has been named three years in a row as a Southern California “Rising Star” in surveys conducted by Law & Politics Media Inc. and published in
Los Angeles magazine.
Sharon recently co-authored, "Litigating Global Warming: Likely Legal Challenges to Emerging Greenhouse Gas Cap-and-Trade Programs in the United States," which was published in the May 2009 issue of Environmental Law Institute's
News & Analysis Journal. Sharon will be teaching a course on energy law, policy and climate change this fall semester at UCLA School of Law.
Illustrative Professional Experience
- Representing company in cost allocation dispute under CERCLA
- Representing oil company in litigation involving natural resource damages and proceedings related to oil and gas leases and unitization issues
- Representing and advising investor owned utilities in a variety of litigation, regulatory and appellate matters
- Representing defense contractor in federal and state court against class and mass toxic tort actions involving air and groundwater contamination
Pro Bono Activities and Community at Large
Sharon devotes time to a number of pro bono activities, including The California Aspire Achieve Lead Pipeline Project where she assisted in the incorporation of a new non-profit that will provide educational opportunities for students in pre-school through graduate school with the hope of promoting diversity in the legal profession. She also helped found the Diversity Coalition Pipeline Law Magnet Partnership and is in charge of the partnership program O’Melveny has established with Monroe High School’s Law and Government Magnet program. In addition, she organizes a team of O’Melveny attorneys to participate in Public Counsel’s yearly Run for Justice fundraiser.
Sharon is also active in the community. She serves as a director for The Conference of California Public Utility Counsel; she is on the Board of Governors for the Women's Lawyers Association of Los Angeles; she serves as a director for Uncommon Good, a nonprofit organization that works to ensure that the poor have access to quality education, health care, and legal services; and she is a director for Pomona Heritage.
Professional Activities
Law Clerk, Honorable Danny J. Boggs, US Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Lecturer in Law, UCLA School of Law;
Energy Law, Policy & Climate Change