FTC ISSUES - Key Persons
Alexis Peters assists and advises clients on a variety of matters associated with land use, including real estate transfers, commercial leasing, condominium formation, and environmental and zoning permitting. She uses her knowledge of Vermont property, land use and environmental law to inform clients of potential issues and finds practical solutions so that major projects can move forward on time and on budget.
While completing her law degree, Alexis spent a year in the United Kingdom obtaining a master's from the University of Cambridge, through which she studied different legal systems' approaches to environmental regulation and land management. She now applies this multi-dimensional understanding of the law to her work.
Experience
Successfully defended client in an appeal of client's state and local land use permits. Alexis was a member of the trial team that represented the telecommunications company that is bringing FirstNet and wireless communications service to the town of Norton, VT.
Education
Job Titles:
- Administration
- Joins DRM As Manager of Library and Research Services
Alison Alifano is the firm's information professional and works closely with the legal staff as they develop solutions and deliver results to the firm's clients. As a hands-on person, Alison looks for solutions using her many years of experience and a broad range of resources. Working in law firms and a non-profit bar association has played to Alison's problem-solving mindset, which allows her to bring value to each project she manages for the firm's lawyers and clients.
Alison is well respected throughout the law library community and brings years of relationship building experience to the work that she does for the firm and its clients. New to the firm's support team in 2014, Alison draws upon her years of large law firm experience to bring innovative research solutions to Downs Rachlin Martin.
Experience
Works with firm management to negotiate cost-efficient contracts that bring a suite of information resources to the lawyers' desktops.
Job Titles:
- Legal Professional
- Legal Professionals
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- Administration
- DRM 's Chief Operating Officer
Angela Comeau serves as DRM's Chief Operating Officer where she leads the operations team responsible for information technology, knowledge management, marketing, information research, human resources and facilities. She has studied organizational management and has twenty-five years of healthcare leadership and service experience where she developed her deep appreciation of highly functioning teams, and the impact team dynamics have on business outcomes.
Angela believes that service and support of DRM's teams is essential to achieve the best client outcome. Combined with her passion for creating efficiency and clear communication, Angela actively analyzes data, defines and measures processes, and creates networks for communication to share organizational knowledge.
Experience
Building organizational trust and operational consistency, Angela has worked with large physician faculty practice groups during a compensation reorganization and tenuous time, and effectively established trust in operations.
Job Titles:
- Legal Professional
- Legal Professionals
Carolyn Moore is responsible for driving legal project management success at Downs Rachlin Martin. She assists clients and attorneys in a process that is both transparent and collaborative. With client goals and expectations in focus, she utilizes legal project management tools to ensure that matters are efficiently planned, tracked, and that budgets are closely monitored.
Education
Gettysburg College, B.A. German Studies, 2003
Middlebury College, M.A., 2004
Cathy Stadecker uses her trademark expertise to help clients protect their brands and other intellectual property. She focuses her practice on intellectual property counseling involving trademark, copyright, advertising, unfair competition, and Internet issues. She regularly advises clients, from start-ups to large corporations, on registering trademarks and copyrights, managing trademark portfolios, policing efforts to protect trademarks and copyrights, resolving disputes relating to trademarks and copyrights, and licensing arrangements. Cathy has extensive experience litigating opposition and cancellation proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB), as well as a variety of intellectual property cases in federal court. She also drafts and negotiates a wide range of intellectual property-related agreements, including consulting agreements, non-disclosure agreements, license agreements, and software agreements.
Experience
Represents well-known, international children's clothing brand in connection with trademark clearance, prosecution and enforcement matters.
Chris Roy draws on his legal and community experience to advocate effectively for clients in a wide range of litigation contexts and has been doing so for over three decades. Chris works closely with clients to tailor litigation plans to reflect their needs and goals in light of the legal and practical landscape that lies ahead. As a seasoned commercial litigator, Chris represents clients across Vermont - from individuals to businesses big and small - with respect to business disputes of all kinds. Chris devotes much of his practice to permit litigation and to resolving the entire spectrum of real property-related disputes. As a former member of the Williston Selectboard and Vermont Environmental Board, and past Chair of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, Chris is able to represent clients in a variety of land use, tax, administrative and other matters with the added perspective derived from his years of relevant public service. Besides appearing regularly before the Environmental Division and trying cases in Superior Courts across Vermont, Chris is an active appellate litigator, having represented clients in over 40 appeals before the Vermont Supreme Court and other appellate courts.
Experience
On appeal to the Vermont Supreme Court, Chris successfully gained reversal of a grant of summary judgment in a significant deed dispute involving a major Vermont resort. This reversal allowed the client to avoid substantial redesign and reconstruction costs. On remand, the trial court found in the client's favor on the deed interpretation issue. On appeal to the Vermont Supreme Court for a second time, the trial court's decision in favor of the client was affirmed.
Represented national retailers in significant permit disputes involving Act 250, local zoning, and stormwater regulation. In coordination with lawyers in the firm's real estate group, Chris has helped the clients work through federal, state and local processes in order to develop new store locations.
Worked with quarrying and extraction clients as they navigated the maze of permits necessary to expand their operations. He also pursued a significant property tax appeal on behalf of a large quarry operation. A favorable settlement in the tax appeal was reached during trial.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Deputy Managing Partner
The Diane R. Lynch Distinguished Service Award is given annually to a former or current employee who has demonstrated the loyalty, dedication, energy, drive, selflessness, good nature, humor and commitment that Diane Lynch exemplified in her years with the firm.
Diane joined the firm in 1974 as a legal secretary, and worked for more than 20 years in the firm's St. Johnsbury Office. She was named office manager in 1976 and personnel and administrative manager in 1983. In that position, she managed employment services for a law firm that grew from 15 employees working in one office in 1974 to more than 130 employees in five offices when she left the firm due to illness. In 1994 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In the following years she continued to assist Downs Rachlin whenever possible, and returned to the firm between periods of intensive treatment.
Diane Lynch was the type of Downs Rachlin employee that many would like to emulate. She was widely known and universally liked. Sadly, she passed away on November 29, 2000, shortly before the first Diane R. Lynch Distinguished Service Award was presented. Since then, the firm has each year honored a dedicated employee whose service to the firm has helped to make it an outstanding place to live and to work.
Downs Rachlin Martin is the exclusive member firm in Vermont for Lex Mundi - the world's leading network of independent law firms with in-depth experience in 100+ countries worldwide.
Downs Rachlin Martin's management structure supports the collaborative advantages of collegiality and the operating efficiencies of a corporate hierarchy. As firm managers, attorneys share first-hand in the challenges of running a substantial business. This practical experience assures our clients that Downs Rachlin's attorneys and staff understand the challenges they face in a changing world.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Managing Partner
The foundation for Downs Rachlin was established in 1950, when Sterry R. Waterman and John H. Downs founded Waterman and Downs, a St. Johnsbury, VT. law firm practicing business law and litigation with associated work in government affairs. Five years later, Waterman was appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower to serve as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Waterman read law before being admitted to practice. He served as a circuit court judge for 15 years before assuming senior status in 1970.
Downs worked as a sole practitioner until 1960, when Robert D. Rachlin joined him after having graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. Allen Martin, who had served as a law clerk for Judge Waterman in 1965 - 1966 and spent three years practicing law in Boston, joined the firm in 1969. Like Downs, Martin earned his law degree at Harvard Law School. The number of employees at the St. Johnsbury office quickly expanded to 15. In 1976, Rachlin opened a second office in Burlington, and Martin followed in 1980.
Today, Downs Rachlin Martin PLLC has offices in Burlington, St. Johnsbury, Brattleboro, and Montpelier, Vt. and Lebanon, N.H. The firm has more than 140 employees, including approximately 60 attorneys and legal professionals. It is the largest law firm in Vermont and one of the largest firms in northern New England offering a broad range of services with deep experience within those specific areas.