Gary Davis established an office of the public interest environmental law firm Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation (LEAF) in Knoxville Tennessee in 1983 after returning to Tennessee from a stint with the California Governor’s Office. After four years in which LEAF litigated precedent-setting cases involving hazardous waste disposal and water pollution, Mr. Davis established his own environmental law practice representing citizen groups, environmental organizations, state and local governments, and individual clients throughout the Southeast. In 2002, he temporarily stopped taking new clients and relocated to Naples, Florida, to work on restoring the Everglades as the Policy Director of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. He returned to the mountains in Spring 2005 and reestablished his law office in Hot Springs, North Carolina, northwest of Asheville near the Tennessee border. The office is in an old rock house one block from the Appalachian Trail, one block from the wild and scenic French Broad River, and one block from the Hot Springs Spa, location of an historic hot springs resort in the 1800’s.
