Current Positions: Managing Partner practicing water rights and supply law at Best Best & Krieger LLP, working on surface water and groundwater issues throughout California, and serves as IWRA’s Treasurer.

Professional Experience: Eric is licensed to practice law in the State of California. Eric has held the Managing Partner position at Best Best & Krieger LLP since 2005 and is now serving his tenth term. Elected by the partnership, the Managing Partner oversees all aspects of the firm’s operations in all offices.

Under Eric’s leadership, Best Best & Krieger LLP has grown substantially and is an industry leader in innovation and diversity, all of which have earned accolades from the legal community and the press. For the past two decades, he has worked extensively on groundwater matters. He represented the lead parties in the Santa Maria and Antelope Valley groundwater adjudications, is involved in the Oxnard Pleasant Valley, Cuyama, Indian Wells Valley, Las Posas and Ventura River adjudications, and also was involved in the Mojave Groundwater adjudication.

He was involved in drafting the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and testified before the state Senate Committee on Natural Resources & Water on adjudication reform legislation. He has drafted water laws in South Africa, Trinidad and Pakistan and worked with the United Nations Environmental Programme on incorporating environmental issues into water laws, the World Bank on groundwater issues in the Middle East and North Africa and was the first American Chair of the International Bar Association’s Water Law Committee.

Academic Background: Eric co-authored “California Water,” “California Water II” and “California Water Third Edition,” and is an adjunct law professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

Recognition and Memberships:
He has also been chosen as a California Lawyer of the Year by California Lawyer magazine, twice as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California by the Daily Journal, twice as the Water Law Lawyer of the Year in Los Angeles by Best Lawyers and was one of five lawyers in the United States named MVP of the Year by Law360.