Legal Matters in Communications & Energy

Your Representation with State Regulatory Agencies

Our Communications and Energy legal practice represents public utility companies, competitive service providers, and business and governmental consumers in various transactions and before state regulatory agencies. Our services range from helping small public utilities with a wide variety of legal representation and needs, to helping large public utilities with asset acquisitions or regulatory issues and cases. We can also provide legal guidance with large consumers and government aggregators with a variety of energy and communications-related issues. We coordinate with our other practice groups, like Corporate and Business, Labor and Employment, Litigation, Real Estate, Insurance, and Tax, to provide comprehensive and efficient services to our clients.

Specific areas of practice include:

Communications

Our communications practice offers a wide range of legal services. Our attorneys prepare and negotiate all kinds of contracts and agreements, including asset and business acquisition, dark fiber, interconnection, pole and tower attachment, rail crossing, rights-of-way, easement, and customer agreements.

We also handle traditional regulatory issues like tariffs, wholesale and retail rate regulation, interconnection mediations and arbitrations, rural exemption, service quality, reporting compliance, certifications, rulemakings, and complaint cases. We have extensive experience before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) in all facets of communications regulation going back to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and before, including appeals from the PUCO to the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Energy

Our energy practice helps clients with both transactional and regulatory legal issues. Our attorneys prepare and negotiate contracts and agreements that involve the acquisition and disposition of energy assets, competitive services, demand reduction, and municipal aggregation.

We also handle regulatory issues like certification of competitive suppliers and governmental aggregators; the resolution of disputes among suppliers, competitors and customers; generic rulemakings; rate regulation (including municipal rate ordinances and appeals); prosecution and defense of competitor and consumer complaints, including service quality issues; and siting power plants and other energy facilities.