Freedom S.N. Smith is a partner in the Firm’s Environmental group and works in the areas of regulatory compliance and risk management, environmental law, natural resources and sustainability law, agricultural law, environmental and toxic tort litigation, procurement, and general litigation. Freedom’s clients are involved in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, energy, real estate, and construction.
Freedom has experience representing companies, municipalities, and citizens in a wide variety of areas in both state and federal courts as well as in administrative proceedings across the country. She has frequently litigated cases for both public and private clients involving contracts, accidental releases of contamination, property transfers, leaking underground storage tanks, cost recovery actions, environmental and other insurance and coverage claims, environmental enforcement actions or clean-ups under a wide variety of regulatory programs, including CERCLA/SUPERFUND. She has also handled numerous complex lawsuits involving business disputes, including cases involving breach of contract, products liability, and fraud.
Freedom also advises and represents entities and individuals with regard to regulatory and compliance matters; managing environmental liability in business transactions, including the transfer of operations may be contaminated or potentially regulated by environmental laws; business certifications, and procurement. She works with numerous corporations, municipalities and utilities on all aspects of environmental compliance, air and water permitting, wastewater discharges, responding to local, state and federal agencies, dealing with citizen complaints, Brownfields redevelopment, and policy issues.
Freedom is often called upon to use her general litigation and administrative agency experience to assist in representing Ice Miller clients in other venues, such as before the Indiana Department of Administration and, the United States Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Freedom has co-authored several environmental law survey articles for publication in the Indiana Law Review as well as other articles and newsletters regarding environmental information requests, administrative actions, and regulatory issues.
Freedom is actively involved with the American Bar Association’s (ABA) section of Environment, Energy, and Resources and has for the last several years has served as the Electronics Communications Vice Chair, for the Pesticides, Chemical Regulation, and Right to Know Committee. Freedom is also involved with the Indiana State Bar Association (ISBA), serving on the Executive Committee for the Environmental Law Section and also serving on the Planning Committee for ISBA’s Leadership Development Academy Program.
Freedom serves on the Board of Directors for Earth Day Indiana and the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana’s Community Engagement Committee.
Prior to joining Ice Miller LLP in 2005, Freedom served as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Andrew S. Effron of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C. Similarly, she served as a judicial extern for the Honorable Patricia Riley of the Indiana Court of Appeals. Freedom also clerked as a Honors Law Clerk for the Washington, D.C. office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of General Counsel—Solid Waste and Emergency Response Law Office in 2003, and served as a legal clerk in the appellate section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2002.
Freedom graduated, cum laude, from Indiana University Maurer School of Law in 2001, and was a managing editor for the Indiana Law Journal, and a Moot Court Quarterfinalist. She graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana in 2001 where she received her Bachelor of Arts in computer science and biology, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
She is admitted to practice in the state of Indiana, the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of Indiana, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
