Hope Jacobsen is a shareholder and director of Perkins Thompson. Ms. Jacobsen counsels a wide variety of business, institutional and individual clients on environmental liability, compliance and due diligence issues. She represents clients before local, state and federal agencies in obtaining environmental and land use permits, particularly those required for developing and redeveloping sites, including wetlands, Site Law, stormwater, site plan and subdivision approvals. She also assists clients in brownfields redevelopment and in obtaining environmental liability protections through the Maine Department of Environmental Protection's Voluntary Response Action Program ("VRAP"). Ms. Jacobsen works regularly with clients to negotiate the cleanup of former and current industrial and commercial sites with various governmental authorities.

Much of Ms. Jacobsen’s work involves the negotiation of environmental liability risk allocation during the course of real estate acquisition or disposition, whether by stock or asset transfer, and work needed following the consummation of those transactions, including permit transfers, environmental remediation work, and the use of environmental escrow accounts. Recent transactions include advising a client on the sale of a multi-site business with a complicated environmental history, the assistance of a land trust in acquiring a contaminated site with an eye toward minimizing the land trust’s environmental liability under state and federal environmental laws, and advising a client on the environmental aspects of a complicated long-term leasing arrangement for dozens of retail sites. She also regularly advises clients in connection with Phase I and Phase II work and the reporting of the same, including the necessary Phase I investigation and report format to comply with the relatively new “All Appropriate Inquiry” standard under CERCLA to qualify prospective purchasers for CERCLA’s landowner liability protections.

Ms. Jacobsen's experience also includes defending enforcement actions brought by EPA and DEP, and litigating environmental and land use cases in state and federal court.

Ms. Jacobsen is past Chair (2009), Vice-Chair (2008) and Secretary/Treasurer (2007), Natural Resources and Environmental Law Section of the Maine State Bar Association, past Website Committee Chair, Women’s Law Section, Maine State Bar Association; past Barrister, Gignoux Inn of Court. She is a member of the Maine State Bar Association and the American Bar Associations (“ABA”). She is a section member of the ABA’s Section on Environment and Energy.

Ms. Jacobsen was a presenter at the Maine State Bar Association’s Real Estate Institute in 2010, where she and her fellow director Gordon Scannell gave a presentation on structuring complex purchase and sale agreements to address environmental risks and liabilities. She has also lectured frequently on the new cleanup guidelines adopted by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection in 2010, including at a forum hosted by the Maine Real Estate Developers’ Association (“MEREDA”) and at the E2Tech Council's forum on New Maine DEP Guidelines for Cleaning of Contaminated Soil (2010). She has been the moderator of the Maine Bar Association Seminars on How to Get a Land Use Permit (2007) and Recent Updates in Environmental Law (2009), and a presenter of a seminar on the New Environmental Liability Protections (2006)(discussing the new “All Appropriate Inquiry” standard under CERCLA).

Ms. Jacobsen is Peer Review rated for Ethical Standards and Legal Ability by Martindale-Hubbell.

Publications and Presentations

• "Securing Local Land Use Permits," Maine Bar Journal, January, 2001