Heather A. Welles

LOS ANGELES - Heather A. Welles is counsel at O'Melveny & Myers LLP and among the attorneys who founded the firm's water practice.

She represents one of a small set of lawyers in the U.S. with deep expertise in a niche field that is growing in importance. She represents clients in public agencies, agriculture, energy, private equity and environmental conservation.

Raised in California, she moved to Texas with her husband and worked in the state Legislature there for a politician whose district had water rights issues. "Groundwater regulations turned out to be so interesting to me," Welles said. "Water is at the nexus of human life and it involves fascinating science, too. Water law combines old English doctrines developed as common law with layers of complex contemporary regulations."

At UC Berkeley School of Law, she edited the Ecology Law Quarterly, graduated first in her class and won the Landis Prize for a research paper on Texas water law. Then followed clerkships with Judge William A. Fletcher at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge David S. Tatel at the D.C. Circuit.

"I learned that not everyone is as fascinated as I am with water law," Welles laughed. "A clerk of Judge Tatel's once said to me, 'Convince me that CEQA is not the most boring statute in the world.'" Fletcher and Tatel, she added, taught her about legal writing and analysis. "They were great mentors."

At O'Melveny, Welles is on the team representing a group of landowners in a first-of-its-kind multi-stage adjudication under a statute linked to California's new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Las Posas Water Rights Coalition v. Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency, VENC100509700 (S. Barbara Co. Super. Ct., filed March 27, 2018).

The team successfully negotiated a full agreement to resolve all the issues contained in the first phase of the three-phase matter and defended that resolution at trial over objections. Welles and colleagues are now leading negotiations to resolve the second phase, which involves the allocation of groundwater rights among landowners across the basin.

"We're gearing up for trial in September," Welles said. "I'm doing the briefing and expert work. The case involves more than 200 parties, and we're figuring out the witness list."

Earlier, Welles worked on briefing a cert petition at the U.S. Supreme Court over a municipal sign ordinance and the First Amendment. The justices ruled that the city's ordinance was content-neutral, handing it a win. City of Austin, Texas v. Reagan National Advertising of Texas Inc., 20-1029 (S.Ct., decided April 21, 2022).

"I got to work with Michael R. Dreeben, who has argued more Supreme Court cases than just about anyone," Welles said, naming a prominent O'Melveny partner. "That was really interesting."