Jennifer F. Novak

At the helm of the Law Office of Jennifer F. Novak in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, founder Jennifer F. Novak has built a practice centered on water, waste, soil and land use law. For nearly 30 years, she has guided property owners and businesses through the complexities of environmental litigation, offering counsel on soil and groundwater remediation, Clean Water Act citizen suits and water board investigation orders, among other regulatory challenges.

Ms. Novak's path into law was set early. At just five years old, she declared two ambitions: to become a lawyer and a mother. She has since realized both, carrying forward a legal legacy as a second-generation California attorney. Her career, which began in 1996, spans private practice, a clerkship with an appellate court judge and a tenure as a deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice. In that role, she confronted novel and high-stakes legal questions, often representing matters valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, always in service of the people of California.

That government experience now informs her private practice, where Ms. Novak works to keep environmental regulation both rigorous and fair for businesses striving toward compliance. Her client roster reflects this range: Fortune 500 corporations and national companies on one end and retirees whose decades-old manufacturing operations left them facing unexpected liability on the other. 

Across this spectrum, Ms. Novak recognizes the anxiety that accompanies a looming or active lawsuit, and she approaches each case with a commitment to translating dense environmental statutes into plain, actionable guidance – standing beside her clients throughout the process.

Ms. Novak earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California (UC), Berkeley, in 1993, followed by her law degree from UC Davis School of Law in 1996. Additionally, her publications include two articles for Los Angeles Lawyer magazine: "A Trial Preparation Checklist" (2002) and "The Value of Simplifying Case Presentation" (2005).