Career
Nora Sheriff is a Partner in Buchalter’s San Francisco office and a member of the Firm’s Energy & Natural Resources Practice Group. With decades of experience in the energy industry, Nora focuses her practice on electric and natural gas regulatory and administrative litigation, legislative efforts, and end-use contractual transactions; she works to ensure clean energy tools are available for large end-use customer use to help mitigate the impacts of the high cost of California power on California manufacturing and avoid carbon emissions leakage by keeping manufacturing in California. Her clients include cement, steel, industrial gas, medical gas, energy infrastructure, minerals processing, beverage, and cold storage industry corporations, oil and gas energy companies working to advance a lower carbon future, the largest provider of renewable natural gas for transportation in North America, the only private, all-electric, high-speed rail provider, investment banks and lenders, clean energy companies offering scalable, low-carbon solutions to end-users, Municipal Utilities, Cities, Water Agencies, as well as wholesale demand response providers, scheduling coordinator/distributed energy resource aggregators, integration technology solutions providers and renewable energy systems developers. Nora represents large power customers and clean power stakeholders, informs, and helps shape California’s energy policy debates, and advocates for clean energy and large end-user ratepayer interests.
In 2025, Nora Sheriff was recognized as one of the San Francisco Business Times’ Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business. Nora is recognized by Chambers USA as a leader in her field in the area of Energy, State Regulatory & Litigation (California) and in the Best Lawyers in America, Energy Law and Natural Resources Law, since 2023.
She served as President of the Conference of California Public Utility Counsel (CCPUC) for the 2023-2024 term and on the CCPUC Board (2018-2024).
Professional Memberships
Member, Former President (2023-2024) and Board of Directors (2018-2024), Conference of the California Public Utility Counsel
Member, Power Association of Northern California
Member, Association of Women in Water, Energy, and the Environment
Member, Women in Energy
Member, Women in Public Utilities
Former Admiral of the St. Ignatius Parent Navy (2020-2021)
Former President (2016-2017, 2013-2014) and Board Member (2011-2017) for the Parent Board of St. Gabriel School in San Francisco.