Hollis leads ABA panel
By Justin Facey

Sheila Hollis was the first director of the Office of Enforcement at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and established the office’s policies and procedures, which remain in place today.

More than 35 years after she graduated, Sheila Hollis ('71) finally got a job in journalism.  With a capital "J."

Hollis, chair of the Duane Morris law office in Washington, D.C., has been elected chair of the Board of Editors for the ABA Journal, the American Bar Association's prestigious 450,000-circulation monthly magazine.

Hollis credits her time in the honors program at CU with giving her a love of journalism that has helped shape her career as an attorney.

"It has been a tremendous asset to me," said Hollis, who has coauthored two energy-law texts in addition to scores of columns and articles on energy and environmental  law and policy. "I've continued to write all through my career."

Her new post as chair of the Board of Editors comes after six years on the volunteer board and gives her a chance to exercise her editing skills and give input to the editor and publisher, Edward Adams, and a large editorial and production staff at the ABA Journal.

"It's a wonderful thing," Hollis said. "I love journalism, page layout and editing. This is a chance to bring together everything I learned at the University of Colorado and on the job over the years I have been in journalism and law."

Her favorite part? "I still enjoy great headlines, crystallizing ideas," she said.

The most critical thing she said she learned from her time in the SJMC is the importance of avoiding writer's block as well as essential need for accuracy.  She said she also fondly recalls the real-world training and demands for excellence of the SJMC faculty and staff, then located in Macky Auditorium. 

Hollis said her delight in journalism was enhanced by her job as SJMC librarian in her first year at CU and by the friendship and consideration demonstrated by the journalism school during the time she had a child and commuted to Denver to work at the Englewood Herald, Cervi's Business Journal and the Denver Catholic Register while attending CU.  The encouragement of the SJMC faculty to go on to law school was a major catalyst at a time when few women ventured into the legal profession, she said. 

Looking back, Hollis noted that the ability to get words on paper was a key part of her experience.  "Sometimes you just have to force words out of yourself," she said. "If you have the ability to fight through writer's block, that will serve you well in any profession, but particularly in the law."

She said she reads at least three major newspapers a day in addition to a number of legal and energy trade and "inside the Beltway" publications.

"In my business, it's the best way to avoid losing opportunities," she said.
After graduating with honors from SJMC,  where she received the Press Women's Scholarship,  and graduating cum laude in her overall studies, Hollis sped through Law School at the University of Denver, finishing the three-year program in 2½ years. 

"I was restless and ready to get out in the world," Hollis said. And get out into the world she did, taking on major legal representations from Ethiopia to Canada and China to Eastern Europe.  Unable to resist the lure of the law-school environment, Hollis taught energy law as a professorial lecturer for 20 years at George Washington University Law School until 2000. 

Since joining the legal community, Hollis said she has embarked on a series of firsts, founding the Washington, D.C., office of Duane Morris, one of the nation's 100 largest law firms, where she also serves on the executive committee. She was managing partner of the Washington office from 1997 to 2004, and now, as chair of the office, she is the first woman and the first non-Philadelphian to serve on the firm's five-member executive committee.

Honing her skills in energy transactional and regulatory law, Hollis was the first attorney in private practice to be nominated for Platt's Global Energy Award for Lifetime Achievement. She was the first director of the Office of Enforcement at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and established the office's policies and procedures, which remain in place today.

Hollis was also the first female president of the Federal Energy Bar Association, a position that used her experience in energy reliability, enforcement and compliance. She recently represented the District of Columbia in an important electric reliability case, which she said she thinks of as "one of my most gratifying because it kept the lights on in Washington, D.C."