Robert W.

Scheffy, Jr.

Position: Partner
Office: Baton Rouge

Rob Scheffy is a partner in the Corporate Practice Group, focusing on real estate, and a member of the Energy, Environmental & Natural Resources Industry Team.

Rob Scheffy has provided businesses with a steady, guiding hand through all phases of the economic cycle, from booms to busts and everything in between. Often described as a “hybrid” lawyer, he draws on his years of private practice and his service as in-house counsel for an interstate gas pipeline company to advise pipeline companies and exploration and production companies in connection with the development, purchase, and sale of producing properties. Rob is also a licensed title agent representing a number of the National Title Insurance Companies. Due to his diverse practice footprint, he is often called on by real estate developers, lenders, and E&P companies to resolve matters involving surface use issues and/or to offer advises on title insurance coverages. Recently, he has been called on to offer such advises to companies involved in the alternative energy world.

Rob’s broad commercial real estate practice includes representing lenders, borrowers, and developers on matters such as extensive title examination, and negotiating loan agreements and other collateral documents for lenders and borrowers. He also provides counsel to lenders and borrowers on land use issues, including zoning, coastal use permitting, Section 404 permitting, and environmental site assessments.

Rob has also been involved in project development work in connection with commercial real estate development, industrial plant operations, and the development of underground storage facilities. He has provided counsel to clients with regard to developing commercial shopping center sites and residential developments, as well as with structuring the relationships between chemical plants for the sharing of facilities, utilities, and services, and the granting of reciprocal servitudes for operations. Rob has also worked on the financing of such transactions.

In addition, Rob has handled similar arrangements between electrical power generators, exempt wholesale generators, and electrical transmission companies, and has worked on and drafted the necessary servitude (easement) agreements to bring power and/or fuel to such facilities, as well as to deliver product from such plants. In conjunction with these matters, he has been involved in land use planning issues, environmental regulatory issues, and financing issues involving commercial real estate projects, industrial projects, and power generation projects.

Rob’s energy practice includes the representation of pipeline companies and exploration and production companies in connection with the development, purchase, and sale of producing properties. He has also been involved with matters related to the acquisition and permitting for the storage of natural gas in salt dome caverns and depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs, as well as the acquisition of producing properties.

Rob has extensive experience in connection with the representation of exploration and production companies, including title review activities such as preliminary drill site title opinions, division order title opinions, and financing title opinions. He has also represented pipeline companies in connection with the acquisition of rights of way and the planning of pipeline alignment.