Greg Fullem

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Action is eloquence

How I represent clients at Schwabe

Throughout my career, I have strived to maintain a reputation for excellence, thoroughness, and diplomacy in helping clients address complex natural resource and environmental issues. As the leader of Schwabe’s Forest Products team, I work on sustainable forestry matters, land stewardship and conservation transactions, carbon development projects, and renewable energy issues. My experience includes handling diverse real estate matters, with a general focus on forest products and timberlands transactions, forest and grasslands carbon transactions, and large-scale conservation projects.

Clients rely on my legal and industry knowledge for successful acquisitions and dispositions of real property (including timberlands, commercial properties, farms, and ranches), leasing transactions, access agreements, credit facilities, long-term timber and fiber supply agreements, “working forest” and other conservation easements, carbon transactions, and numerous day-to-day land management operational issues. I represent timber investment management organizations, industrial timberland owners, carbon project developers, lenders, land trusts and other nonprofit entities, biomass developers, geothermal and solar energy projects, commercial real estate developers, forest products manufacturers and mill operators, ports, and local governments.

An appetite for complexity

I frequently serve as lead counsel on high-profile, complex transactions with intricate deal structures and issues, and relish crafting creative documents and solutions. I focus on crux issues in transactions and endeavor to bring an insightful, measured approach to even the most perplexing problems.

International experience

During a two-year hiatus from Schwabe, I served as legal counsel for the State of Koror in Micronesia’s Republic of Palau. While in Palau, I drafted environmental, natural resources, and other laws and regulations and handled various real estate, marine, and other natural resources matters. I also argued before the Supreme Court of the Republic of Palau and acted as general counsel for Koror State. While back practicing in the United States, I assisted a North American client with a mill acquisition transaction in Ecuador and worked on other international transactions, including aspects of carbon development transactions in the Caribbean, South America, and Oceania.


Chambers & Partners USA, client highlights

“Greg has been excellent in dealing with our opposite counsel and moved the deal forward.”

“He has a tremendous amount of experience.”

Experience

Timber and Forest Product Transactions

  • Acted as lead counsel with regard to the acquisition of over 300,000 acres of timberlands in the Shasta Region of Northern California in two separate transactions for affiliated timber investment management organization entities.
  • Represented a timber investment management organization in the acquisition of 1.55 million acres of timberland located in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama involving approximately 1.38 million fee acres and approximately 175,000 acres of leasehold property.
  • Served as lead counsel for a timber investment management organization in the disposition of 111,967 acres of timberlands in Mendocino County, California, and related rights and property.
  • Served as real estate and natural resources counsel for North America’s largest manufacturer of hardwood plywood and hardwood veneer products, which operates facilities throughout the United States and Canada.
  • Served as lead counsel on numerous large-scale conservation easement transactions in Oregon, Washington, and California on behalf of both land trusts and industrial timberland owners, including transactions involving Forest Legacy Program “working forest” conservation easements on the southern slopes of Mt. St. Helens in Skamania County and on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, in the Arch Cape Region on the Oregon Coast, on the East Moraine adjoining Wallowa Lake in Eastern Oregon, and in the Redwood forests of Humboldt County, California.
  • Served as lead counsel for acquisition, funding, and operational issues related to a small-diameter log mill facility and accompanying integrated biomass energy campus in Wallowa, Oregon.
  • Represented a timber investment management organization regarding its sale to a third-party commercial timberlands owner of approximately 176,000 acres of timberland interests comprised of fee, timber deeds, and leaseholds located in upstate New York, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, and Louisiana.

Carbon Transactions

  • Represented a conservation entity that owns a 50,000-acre tract in the redwood region in California regarding its sale of a complex working-forest conservation easement and its subsequent verification and disposition of a significant volume of forest carbon credit offsets under both the voluntary Climate Action Reserve carbon market and the economy-wide carbon cap-and-trade market in California administered by the California Environmental Protection Agency Air Resources Board.
  • Advised a carbon project developer client on the deal structure and created documents pertaining to an approximately 75,000-acre improved forest management carbon project in Alaska, and its companion project which involved the permanent retirement of approximately one billion tons of coal reserves by way of equitable servitude.
  • Advised a carbon project developer in connection with a large-scale grasslands carbon project in Montana.
  • Reviewed and revamped carbon project transaction documents, including carbon development agreements and Emission Reduction Purchase Agreements (ERPAs), for several different carbon developers and landowners.
  • Advised project developer regarding a proposed large-scale innovative reforestation carbon project in Oklahoma.
  • Advised various landowners and project developers on negotiations and documentation regarding multiple ERPA transactions providing for the sale of over 10,000,000 offsets and/or allowances to regulated and unregulated third-party purchasers.
  • Advised a carbon project developer regarding an improved forest management carbon project on lands located in the Arch Cape region of the Oregon Coast.
  • Advised a carbon project developer on aspects of a proposed forest conservation carbon project in Oceania that would generate offset credits to be traded in the European carbon market.
  • Counseled on sale of forest carbon offsets by a Northern California tribal entity to a natural gas company.

Port & Energy-Related Real Estate Transactions

  • Counseled an Oregon port regarding its acquisition of a railroad and the real estate, natural resources, and financing aspects of its negotiations with the developer of a high-profile container and bulk marine terminal.
  • Advised the developer of a 205-megawatt, 89-turbine wind farm built on 9,500 acres near Goldendale, Washington. At the time, the project was the largest public-power-initiated wind project in the United States, developed in part by four consumer-owned Washington public utilities.
  • Handled real estate and financing matters with respect to the development of a 22-megawatt geothermal plant in Neal Hot Springs in Eastern Oregon.
  • Served as lead counsel with regard to various solar energy development projects, alternatively acting as counsel for landowners, solar project developers, and lenders.

Education

  • Willamette University, College of Law, Juris Doctor degree (1995)
  • University of Innsbruck, Austria, Certificate of Global Legal Issues (1993)

Admissions

  • Oregon State Courts
  • Washington State Courts

Awards

  • Recognized by The Best Lawyers in America®, Real Estate Law (2021-2024) and Timber Law (2021-2023)
  • Ranked Real Estate Lawyer in Oregon, Chambers USA (2018-2023)
  • Ranked for Environmental Lawyers in Oregon, Chambers USA (2017)
  • U.S. News & World Report – Best Law Firms, “Law Firm of the Year” in Timber Law, Team Member (2015, 2018, 2020, and 2022)
  • U.S. News & World Report – Best Law Firms, National Tier 1 Firm in Timber Law, Team Member (2015-2023)

Additional Publications

Principal Author, “Forestland, Timber and Forest Products,” Oregon Real Estate Deskbook.

Community Activities

  • World Forestry Center, Board of Directors, Former Vice Chairman
  • Pittock Mansion Society, Board of Directors, Former Member
  • Pittock Mansion Society, Preservation Committee, Former Chair
  • Oregon Sports Union, Inc., Board of Directors, Former Member
  • Early Head Start Family Center of Portland, Board of Directors, Former Member
  • East County Legal Clinic, Pro Bono Volunteer Attorney

Outside Interests

Exploring points near and far with friends and family, fly-fishing, skiing and scuba diving.

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