Paul M. Kohlhoff (Valparaiso)

• B.S. 1981, Purdue
• J.D. 1986, Valparaiso

   

 

Like many who have been featured here, I dreamed but never expected to teach at a law school. I attribute my hiring as a tax clinician at Valparaiso University School of Law to being in the right place, at the right time, with the right experience.

I was supposed to be a veterinarian. And if you were raised in Indiana and wanted to be a veterinarian, there was only one place to go – Purdue University. “Only one thing stood in my way - Organic Chemistry.” Having had more success with calculus of all things, I switched my major to business management during my sophomore year.    

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Tax Prof Profile: New Professor Edition

Over the past seven weeks, I have profiled folks who have started their careers this fall as full-time law school tax professors:

• T. Keith Fogg (Villanova)
• David Gamage (UC-Berkeley)
• Kristin Balding Gutting (Charleston)
• Sarah B. Lawsky (George Washington)
• Lisa Milot (Georgia)
• Edward Kofi Osei (Widener)
• Adam Rosenzweig (Washington University)

This week's Tax Prof Spotlight continues a series of profiles of folks starting their careers this fall as law school tax professors. I hope the profiles will help introduce our newest colleagues to the tax community.

Lisa Milot (Georgia)

• B.A. 1992, New College of Florida
• M.A. 1998, NYU
• J.D. 2001, Virginia

    

      

I’ve never been able to file a 1040-EZ. And that, in short, is how I ended up fascinated by tax law.

It wasn’t why I went to law school – I was originally a graduate student in social anthropology, interested in cultural understandings of human bodies. Many of my questions had legal components (e.g., drug use and international sport, and new reproductive technologies) and I had always considered going to law school, so I left grad school after three years. 

      

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This week's Tax Prof Spotlight continues a series of profiles of folks starting their careers this fall as law school tax professors. I hope the profiles will help introduce our newest colleagues to the tax community.

Adam Rosenzweig (Washington University)

• B.A. 1995, UCLA
• J.D. 1998, Georgetown
• LL.M. (Tax) 2002, NYU

    

      

Similar to many others, tax law was not the field in which I envisioned I would dedicate my professional and academic life when I enrolled in law school. However, as is often the case, my path was paved by learning from and working with some of the best teachers and mentors one could hope for. In particular, I have had the great fortune to be affiliated with three of the finest tax law programs in the country - as a student at Georgetown and NYU, and as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern.

In retrospect, I can honestly say that I was interested in pursuing an academic career since I started studying the law. At the time, however, each step along the path of my career seemed unrelated to such an end

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This week's Tax Prof Spotlight continues a series of profiles of folks starting their careers this fall as law school tax professors. I hope the profiles will help introduce our newest colleagues to the tax community.

Edward Kofi Osei (Widener)

• B.S. 1981, University of Ghana
• M.A. (International Management) 1985, Baylor
• M.A. (International Relations) 1988, Yale
• M.B.A. 1989, Stanford
• J.D. 2003, Temple
• LL.M. (Tax) 2007, NYU

          

My Ghanaian communal background, which charged me with the welfare and upkeep of my “neighbor,” has helped shape the development of my career and helped me to intertwine my well-being, happiness, hopes and dreams with those of my society. Extensive business travels have offered me the opportunity to contribute to, and be enriched by, the experiences and perspectives of different peoples and cultures. My journey to a tax professorship has been long and winding. Long and winding because I had worked in business as a non-lawyer for over 15 years before deciding to attend law school.

I was born in Ghana and had my first break in life when I was selected by my Ghanaian high school to be an exchange student to William Hall High School in West Hartford, CT. Upon graduating from Hall High, I returned to Ghana to attend college at the University of Ghana.

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This week's Tax Prof Spotlight continues a series of profiles of folks starting their careers this fall as law school tax professors. I hope the profiles will help introduce our newest colleagues to the tax community.

Sarah B. Lawsky (George Washington)

• A.B. 1994, Chicago
• J.D. 2001, Yale
• LL.M. (Tax) 2006, NYU

          

      

As my family tree demonstrates, my current job teaching tax law at George Washington University Law School, located at 20th and H Streets in Washington, D.C., may actually be genetically predetermined [click on diagram to enlarge]:

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This week's Tax Prof Spotlight continues a series of profiles of folks starting their careers this fall as law school tax professors. I hope the profiles will help introduce our newest colleagues to the tax community.

Kristin Balding Gutting (Charleston)

• B.S. 1997, Valparaiso University
• J.D. 2000, St. Louis
• LL.M. (Tax) 2001, Florida

          

      

A tax lawyer was not the career I envisioned growing up. I always thought that I would be a FBI agent or some type of advertising executive. When I started college at Valparaiso University, I decided to major in marketing. I soon realized that marketing would require me to participate in several group projects a semester. Unfortunately, this was not something to which I would be able to give 100 percent, because I was on a softball scholarship and traveled throughout the Spring semester. I thought it would be unfair for me to receive a grade as a group that I was unable to attend a majority of the group meetings. So, instead, I decided that I would follow my other career path and major in accounting (a very common major for FBI agents). Throughout my undergraduate studies, I found myself really enjoying my tax classes. However, when I went to law school, I still had the idea of being an FBI agent.

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This week's Tax Prof Spotlight continues a series of profiles of folks starting their careers this fall as law school tax professors. I hope the profiles will help introduce our newest colleagues to the tax community.

David Gamage (UC-Berkeley)

• B.A. 1998, Stanford
• M.A. 2000, Stanford
• J.D. 2005, Yale

          

   

Two years ago, Paul asked me to submit a Tax Prof Profile just as I was beginning a fellowship teaching tax courses at the University of Texas at Austin. Now that I have completed that fellowship and have joined the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) as a tenure-track professor, my old profile strikes me as something written by a much younger, adolescent-like, version of myself.

If there is any truth to my self-perception of having grown significantly as a scholar, the credit lies primarily with the kindness and mentoring I received while at the University of Texas. I owe a profound debt to the Texas faculty – and in particular to Bob Peroni, without whom I might not have survived the job market.

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This week's Tax Prof Spotlight inaugurates a series of profiles of folks starting their careers this fall as law school tax professors. I hope the profiles will help introduce our newest colleagues to the tax community.

T. Keith Fogg (Villanova)

• B.A. 1974, William & Mary
• J.D. 1977, Richmond
• LL.M. 1982, William & Mary

         

   

Like most students I went to college with one career path in mind and changed as courses directed my interests to other areas. I thought I would pursue accounting but one class of accounting convinced me otherwise. I switched to a Government major and pointed toward law school.

My grandfather passed away shortly before I graduated from college and that influenced my law school choice. I attended the University of Richmond and lived on the family farm with my grandmother who had never learned to drive. I loved criminal law in school but was offered a job with Chief Counsel, IRS thus beginning journey to the tax profession.

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Kim Brooks (McGill University, Faculty of Law)

• B.A. 1994, University of Toronto
• L.L.B. 1997, University of British Columbia
• LL.M. 2001, York University (Osgoode Hall Law School)

         

   

I have a soft spot for Bruce Springsteen. When I was a little kid, my father would play “Hungry Heart” on high volume on our stereo, and we would jump around on our living room couches screaming the lyrics. It meant little that neither of us could carry a tune. Teaching tax law, at its best, is rather like those moments – it requires enormous energy, should be understood as a group effort, leads to sweating, and is a great deal of good fun. I love teaching tax, corporate tax, and international tax. I am always surprised that someone actually pays me to spend my days at this job. 

      

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Pamela Champine (New York Law School)

• B.S. 1985, Illinois
• J.D. 1988, Northwestern
• LL.M. (Tax) 1990, NYU

      

         

In my 20th year after graduating from law school, I enjoy tax as much as I did when I took my first tax class with Charlotte Crane. Initially, I was drawn to tax law by the Code’s ostensible precision and organization. I quickly learned that the Code offered fewer clear answers and more underlying inconsistencies than I had first thought, but that drew me even more strongly to tax. Having received my undergraduate degree in Accountancy, I welcomed the opportunity to integrate my understanding of the established principles and provisions of tax law with the opportunities to see ambiguities and to think about how alternative interpretations of ambiguous provisions advance competing tax policies.

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Cheyañna Jaffke (Western State)

• A.B. 1993, Idaho
• J.D. 1996, Idaho
• LL.M. (Tax) 1997, University of Washington

         

 

“Federal Income Tax saved me from dropping out of law school.” After my first year of law school at the University of Idaho, I did not think that law school was for me. But I decided to stick it out for one more semester and one of my classes that semester was Federal Income Tax with John Miller. Finally, a class in law school that I could understand and seemed black and white. I had a code book that I could find the answers in. I did not understand why my classmates thought the class was hard.

That summer I interned with the District Counsel’s office of the IRS in Seattle. I then got my LL.M. in Tax from the University of Washington, because my professor, Jeff Maine told me that "an LL.M. in Tax will open doors for you."

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Glenn Coven (William & Mary)

• A.B. 1963, Swarthmore
• LL.B. 1966, Columbia

         

 

I have always felt badly that I could not answer the question, “And why did you decide to go into teaching tax, Mr. Coven?”, with something like “Gee, ever since I was a little kid I yearned for the day when I could put a smile on the faces of other boys and girls by explaining the beauty of the internal logic of section 336.” Not so. In fact, I seem to have gotten here by stumbling aimlessly down a path that just kept unfolding before me.

In high school I thought I wanted to be an architect (that would have been a disaster) but in my senior year I could not get into a class on mechanical drawing so I decided to become a lawyer instead. Apparently I didn’t reexamine that decision all the way through Swarthmore because I ended up at Columbia Law School. I was so impressed by that experience that, at the end of my first year, I applied to the New York Telephone Co. for a job as a lineman. They turned me down for the reason that I was over-qualified (which seemed untrue) and I returned to Columbia.

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Brian Galle (Florida State)

• A.B. 1995, Harvard
• J.D. 2001, Columbia
• LL.M. (Tax) 2006, Georgetown

         

 

I started out wanting to be a professional writer. But then, I was eight; to me, a “starving writer” was what you were when you had to finish your homework before you could have dessert. By sixteen, I was hip to finances, and I had a plan: be a lawyer, make the big bucks, retire young. Write full-time by fifty.

In college and shortly thereafter, I discovered two very important things. First, that arguing is more fun than writing (this is the obligatory debate-team shout-out). More importantly, that it was very, very unlikely that any novel I wrote would make any difference to social justice, or, for that matter, any difference to anyone who needed anything other than a way to pass their time on the beach or the bus.

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Mona L. Hymel (Arizona)

• B.B.A. 1981, Texas
• J.D. 1992, Texas

       

 

I started preparing tax returns when I was about 15 years old. My father owned a small accounting business in South Texas, and I earned extra money working for him. All of his clients worked in the Shrimping Industry, so I worked mostly on Sub S and individual tax returns. I got my accounting degree from the University of Texas and went to work for Arthur Young (one of the Big 8 then) in Houston after college. After a year as an auditor, I moved to tax. I found tax work much more interesting and challenging. From Arthur Young, I moved to a large real estate developer and a multinational construction contractor where I continued to working in tax compliance. Although the work was interesting, I did not feel challenged.

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Heather M. Field (UC-Hastings)

• B.S. 1997, UCLA
• J.D. 2000, Harvard

       

 

I took an indirect road to tax law – when I started college, I wanted to be a chemistry professor. I majored in biochemistry at UCLA, and I planned to pursue a Ph.D. and teach chemistry at the college level. However, near the end of my college career, I realized that although I loved studying chemistry, I did not enjoy being in the laboratory. Since it is pretty hard to be a great research chemist without spending a lot of time in the lab, I was forced to rethink my plans, and I decided to go to law school.

   

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Karen Green (Mississippi)

• B.S. 1971, Mississippi
• J.D. 1974, Mississippi
• LL.M. (Tax) 1976, NYU

      

   

I began my education as a math major at the University of Mississippi in the late 60s. When I graduated in 1971, I had two job offers -- one in the corporate trust division of a Memphis bank and one as a systems analyst for IBM. Somewhat oddly, considering my love of math and computer programming, I chose the bank job and became interested in becoming a securities lawyer. I returned to Mississippi to attend law school, where I discovered that I enjoyed all things tax -- corporate, partnership, individual, etc. Upon graduation from law school, I immediately entered the graduate tax program at NYU, which was a wonderful academic experience for me.

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Arthur Cockfield (Queen's University)

• H.B.A. 1990, University of Western Ontario Richard Ivey School of Business
• LL.B. 1993, Queen’s University Faculty of Law
• J.S.M. 1996, Stanford
• J.S.D. 1998, Stanford

   

Now in my eighth year of law teaching, I still have to occasionally pinch myself to make sure that I’m not dreaming. Like many others, it is hard for me to imagine a better job than working as a law professor. It is truly a privilege to be able to teach and write for a living (not to mention padding around my house in my pajamas this summer’s day for most of the morning, but I digress …).

How did I get to be a tax prof? My interest in tax began during my undergraduate degree where I majored in finance at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario; I was lucky to have been taught tax and finance courses by the late Sam Martin, a truly inspiring teacher. Having wanted to work as a lawyer since a young kid (hokey but true!), I then went off to study law at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and, again, was fortunate to have strong tax teachers and researchers, including the late Alex Easson.

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Fred B. Brown (Baltimore)

• B.S. 1982, Rutgers
• J.D. 1985, Georgetown
• LL.M. (Tax) 1986, NYU

   

   

I believe that my interest in tax law stemmed from my background as an engineering major in college. Engineering students are often working with complex formulas and applying them to factual situations. I see the work of tax professionals as similar, given that the Code is composed of formulas – expressed in prose instead of symbols, but formulas nonetheless. Engineering students also often use diagrams to analyze situations, another element in common with the study and application of tax law.

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Roger M. Groves (Florida Coastal)

• B.A. 1974, Michigan State
• J.D. 1978, Wayne State

   

   

Roger undoubtedly is the only TaxProf who played the piano at Magic Johnson's wedding and opened for Stevie Wonder.  He is a former tax judge in Michigan, partner in Howard & Howard and counsel to Lewis & Munday.  He teaches in the fields of federal taxation, state and local taxation, business organizations, and emerging issues in the business of sports. Prior to joining Florida Coastal, he was a visiting professor at Lewis & Clark.

Roger has provided business and tax representation of multi-national corporations, hospitals, governmental agencies, high profile individuals (e.g., Aretha Franklin, The Winans), and major college football coaches.

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Ben Alarie (Toronto)

• B.A. 1999, Wilfrid Laurier
• J.D. 2002, Toronto
• M.A. 2002, Toronto
• LL.M. 2003, Yale

 

At the age of 14 I sat alone at the kitchen table with a pencil, an eraser, a solar powered calculator, two information slips, and an unpopulated tax return. My Dad had suggested I take a shot at filling out the return on my own. It was my first formal encounter with income taxes. At the time, I was amazed and deeply impressed by the at best partly obscured complexity of the income tax, and the curious puzzles it raised.

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Janet E. Milne (Vermont)

• B.A. 1973, Williams
• J.D. 1981, Georgetown

         

   

Janet Milne specializes in environmental tax policy at Vermont Law School, where she also teaches land use regulation and regulatory takings. Her interest in law and taxation started shortly after she graduated from Williams College when went to work for Maine Coast Heritage Trust, one of the first land conservation organizations to promote the use of conservation easements. “I never entertained the idea of law school when I graduated, but working on land conservation projects with landowners and their attorneys shed a new and very interesting light on the role of attorneys—and the role of tax incentives.”

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The SMU Graduate Tax Program began more than 50 years ago and prospered under Dean Charles O. Galvin.  Today, U.S. News ranks SMU among the Top 20 law schools in tax and among the Top 10 graduate tax programs. In recent years, the SMU Law Review has published a special tax issue, including

• Time, Tax, and Money (1999)
• Business Purpose, Economic Substance & Tax Shelters (2001)
• Incremental and Fundamental Tax Reform (2003)
• Charles O. Galvin Tax Symposium (2006)

Over this five-part series, TaxProf Blog has profiled SMU's full-time Graduate Tax Faculy: 

    

• Regis W. Campfield
• Christopher H. Hanna
• Henry Lischer
• John J. Mylan
• Joshua C. Tate

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The SMU Graduate Tax Program began more than 50 years ago and prospered under Dean Charles O. Galvin.  Today, U.S. News ranks SMU among the Top 20 law schools in tax and among the Top 10 graduate tax programs. In recent years, the SMU Law Review has published a special tax issue, including

• Time, Tax, and Money (1999)
• Business Purpose, Economic Substance & Tax Shelters (2001)
• Incremental and Fundamental Tax Reform (2003)
• Charles O. Galvin Tax Symposium (2006)

In this five-part series, TaxProf Blog will profile SMU's full-time Graduate Tax Faculy. 

          

Joshua C. Tate

• B.A. 1996, Pomono College
• M.Phil. 1997, University of Cambridge
• M.A. 2000, Yale
• M.Phil. 2001, Yale
• J.D. 2002, Yale
• Ph.D. Candidate, Yale

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The SMU Graduate Tax Program began more than 50 years ago and prospered under Dean Charles O. Galvin.  Today, U.S. News ranks SMU among the Top 20 law schools in tax and among the Top 10 graduate tax programs. In recent years, the SMU Law Review has published a special tax issue, including

• Time, Tax, and Money (1999)
• Business Purpose, Economic Substance & Tax Shelters (2001)
• Incremental and Fundamental Tax Reform (2003)
• Charles O. Galvin Tax Symposium (2006)

In this five-part series, TaxProf Blog will profile SMU's full-time Graduate Tax Faculy. 

          

John J. Mylan

• B.S. 1961, Fordham
• J.D. 1964, Stanford
• LL.M. (Tax) 1965, NYU

I am a native New Yorker and graduate of Fordham with a degree in mathematics. I changed both career path and geographic location upon graduation by attending Stanford Law School, I certainly had no thought of becoming a tax lawyer until I took the basic income tax course from Professor Joseph T. Sneed, a gifted and charismatic teacher whose insights into the tax system I still find valuable today. After Stanford, I returned to New York for a year to earn a graduate tax degree from NYU. My year as a student with that outstanding tax faculty was a great intellectual opportunity.

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The SMU Graduate Tax Program began more than 50 years ago and prospered under Dean Charles O. Galvin.  Today, U.S. News ranks SMU among the Top 20 law schools in tax and among the Top 10 graduate tax programs. In recent years, the SMU Law Review has published a special tax issue, including

• Time, Tax, and Money (1999)
• Business Purpose, Economic Substance & Tax Shelters (2001)
• Incremental and Fundamental Tax Reform (2003)
• Charles O. Galvin Tax Symposium (2006)

In this five-part series, TaxProf Blog will profile SMU's full-time Graduate Tax Faculy. 

          

Henry J. Lischer, Jr.

• B.B.A. (Accounting) 1967, Iowa
• J.D. 1970, Iowa
• LL.M. (Tax) 1974, NYU

Some of us end up as lawyers or law professors because we had, at a young age, a vision of what career to pursue. That was not my path to the tax professoriate. Being young (17) and uninformed when I headed off to the University of Iowa, I had no idea about what to study, so I followed my businessman father’s advice to study accounting. After one summer’s exposure to industrial accounting, I decided that I did not want to be a practicing accountant. My father, upon hearing that I did not want to be an accountant, said "Why don’t you go to law school?", and I again followed his advice and was admitted to the University of Iowa College of Law.

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The SMU Graduate Tax Program began more than 50 years ago and prospered under Dean Charles O. Galvin.  Today, U.S. News ranks SMU among the Top 20 law schools in tax and among the Top 10 graduate tax programs. In recent years, the SMU Law Review has published a special tax issue, including

• Time, Tax, and Money (1999)
• Business Purpose, Economic Substance & Tax Shelters (2001)
• Incremental and Fundamental Tax Reform (2003)
• Charles O. Galvin Tax Symposium (2006)

In this five-part series, TaxProf Blog will profile SMU's full-time Graduate Tax Faculy. 

          

Christopher H. Hanna

• B.S. 1984, Florida
• J.D. 1988, Florida
• LL.M. (Tax) 1989, NYU

My father, a CPA who specializes in taxation, first generated my interest in tax law when I was a college student at Florida. However, when I began law school in the fall of 1985 at Florida, I tried to enter with an open mind as to what area of law I might be interested in concentrating.

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The SMU Graduate Tax Program began more than 50 years ago and prospered under Dean Charles O. Galvin.  Today, U.S. News ranks SMU among the Top 20 law schools in tax and among the Top 10 graduate tax programs. In recent years, the SMU Law Review has published a special tax issue, including

• Time, Tax, and Money (1999)
• Business Purpose, Economic Substance & Tax Shelters (2001)
• Incremental and Fundamental Tax Reform (2003)
• Charles O. Galvin Tax Symposium (2006)

In this five-part series, TaxProf Blog will profile SMU's full-time Graduate Tax Faculy. 

          

Regis W. Campfield

• B.B.A. 1963, Notre Dame
• J.D. 1966, Virginia

I was reared in a small town in the abandoned coal fields of Western Pennsylvania during and in the aftermath of WWII.  I went to college at Notre Dame and law school at Virginia, married Mary, a Ph.D. candidate at Virginia, and began practice at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey.  After having said "yes" when asked if I had any interest in wills, I became a wills and trusts lawyer by having so much to do that I never had the opportunity to try anything else.

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Patricia C. Bradford (Marquette)

• B.A. 1977, SUNY-Buffalo
• J.D. 1981, Hastings

         

   

If someone had told me when I entered law school that I would eventually spend my entire career as a tax professor, I would said, “Your crystal ball is broken.” First of all, when I entered law school, I had never done anything since leaving home for more than 2 years. I dropped out of college after a year and a half because I had completed enough credits for junior status (taking Spanish and Art as electives) and I didn’t know what I wanted to major in. I moved from Northern California to Santa Barbara and got my first real job as the file clerk in the Santa Barbara County Courthouse. Before long, I moved again and became a court clerk in a small two judge county. That’s when I decided I wanted to become a lawyer. I went back to college and finished an English degree at SUNY-Buffalo a year and a half later. A year after that I started law school at Hastings. I was sure I would end up specializing in criminal law. (Every criminal case had a great story. The problem was, I couldn’t decide which side – prosecuting or defending – had the fewest ethical and moral dilemmas.)

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Janice Kay McClendon (Stetson)

• B.A. 1987, Texas
• J.D. 1996, Utah
• LL.M. (Tax) 1997, NYU

         

   

Janice Kay McClendon graduated from University of Utah College of Law with honors in 1996 and received the degree of Master of Laws in Taxation from New York University School of Law in 1997. While at the University of Utah, she was a William H. Leary Scholar for every semester in residence for outstanding academic performance, a teaching assistant for Professor Edwin Firmage, Constitutional Law, an extern for Justice Christine Durhman, Utah Supreme Court, a finalist in the Saul Lefkowitz Trademark/Patent Moot Court Competition, received American Jurisprudence awards for the highest marks in trial advocacy and civil procedure, and developed and taught a First Amendment course in Salt Lake City secondary schools. Professor McClendon is a member of the Order of the Coif.

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Vada Waters Lindsey (Marquette)

• B.A. 1983, Michigan State
• J.D. 1988, DePaul
• LL.M. (Tax) 1992, Georgetown

         

 

I went to law school to become a lobbyist. I majored in Political Science at Michigan State University and worked as a legislative aide for a Michigan State Senator prior to attending law school. I loved the political environment, but I quickly realized that I could not advance in my career without additional education. I felt confident that a law degree would enable me to strengthen my persuasive and analytical abilities and enhance my likelihood of success as a lobbyist.

My plans were derailed when I took my first tax class at DePaul University College of Law. I happened to take my first tax class during 1986 – the year of the infamous Tax Reform Act of 1986. How could I avoid falling in love with the tax system when my first real exposure to tax law occurred shortly after one of the most important tax acts in this country’s history? I was hooked and developed a lifelong passion of tax law. After my epiphany, I took every possible tax class at DePaul and served as a research assistant for two years helping a tax professor research the tax law.

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José M. Gabilondo (Florida-International)

• B.A. 1987, Harvard
• J.D. 1991, Boalt Hall

         

 

It all started with the tax benefit rule in Bobbie Barton’s “baby tax” when I was a 2L at Boalt. She asked about a deduction, and I said “but what about the tax benefit rule?” Brightening, Bobbie said, “What a wonderful answer!” It was my first experience with synthesizing code provisions and the first time a teacher complimented me about something that I had said, so that was all the encouragement I needed. Then a smaller group of us took corporate and partnership tax. She covered the C, S, and K and reorgs in just 4 credits using this terrific CCH book that she did with her tax mentor, Adrian Kragen. (Now as a teacher, I find that amazing.) Each day she would peel off her driving gloves (she was a class act), figure out where our understanding of a case or statute was, and move us along, gently but rigorously. Bobbie was the second woman to get tenure at Boalt (after Herma Hill Kay) and whatever I become as a teacher, I owe to her talent and kindness.

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Christian Johnson (Loyola-Chicago)

• B.A. 1984, Utah
• M.Pr.A. 1985, Utah
• J.D. 1990, Columbia

         

   

I have always been interested in what tax does to a deal. After working for two years as a tax accountant at Price Waterhouse, however, I realized that tax lawyers did one hundred percent of the time, the work that I most enjoyed but only did twenty percent of the time. From there, it was an easy decision to attend Columbia Law School and practice tax law at Milbank Tweed in New York. Although I enjoyed the tax work, I was still fascinated, however, with the deal itself.

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Robert I. Keller (Maryland)

• B.S. 1963, Penn
• LL.B. 1966, Harvard 

   

   

Thirty five years of teaching and no regrets. I can’t imagine a better life.

After majoring in accounting at the Wharton School, I actually entered law school (in 1963) with thoughts of being a tax lawyer. Bernie Wolfman’s course in basic income tax (he was visiting at Harvard in 1964) made me even more enthusiastic. Immediately after law school, I joined the Philadelphia law firm of Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen, the firm where Bernie Wolfman had been a partner. It was a large firm (by 1966 standards) of 60+ lawyers. I didn’t know how to spend my huge $7,800 salary. (Within one year our salaries were raised to $13,500, when New York firms dramatically raised starting salaries to $15,000).

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Kathryn L. Moore (Kentucky)

• A.B. 1983, Michigan
• J.D. 1988, Cornell 

   

 

I was exposed to tax at a very young age. When my brother and I were kids, my father would buy us ice cream. He never bought ice cream for himself, though. Instead, he charged us “tax” on our ice cream - at the notable rate of about 33 percent.

Due to this early exposure to tax and other unknown reasons, I entered law school expecting to like tax. I was not disappointed. Russell Osgood was a brilliant teacher. In his upper level tax classes, he would call on one student for the entire fifty minute class. It was both frightening and exhilarating to be on the hot spot in his class. (I tried to emulate his practice my first year of teaching but couldn’t pull it off.)

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Randall W. Roth (Hawaii)

• B.S. 1970, Regis
• J.D. 1974, Denver
• LL.M. (Tax) 1975, Miami

                   

    

I remember two of my uncles laughing when I told them about my tax classes. They claimed never to have paid taxes. Looking back, I’m not sure if they were tax protestors, tax cheaters, or bad farmers. Actually, I think they were just pulling my leg, but when I suggested that to them, they just laughed some more.

I come from a small town in Kansas, called Ellinwood. My parents were born and raised on small farms a few miles outside of town, as were their parents. Our ancestors who settled those farms had left Germany in the mid-1800s to avoid the draft.

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Stephen W. Mazza (Kansas)

• B.S. 1989, Samford
• J.D. 1992, Alabama
• LL.M. (Tax) 1993, NYU

                  

   

It’s four degrees in Lawrence, Kansas as I write this: Four (4) degrees! For someone who spent the first 20-odd years of his life in Alabama, this is a shock. My people aren’t used to these sorts of temperatures. Momma’s folk are from Mississippi and Dad’s people come from the hills in central Italy. As the story goes, my great uncle arrived in New York in the late 1800s and was conned into traveling to Chicago with the promise of work. Abandoned in Chicago, he started walking south and didn’t stop until he found an area that reminded him of his farm in Italy: Huntsville, Alabama.

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Jeffrey A. Maine (Maine)

• B.B.A. 1989, Florida Atlantic
• M.B.A. 1990, Florida Atlantic
• J.D. 1993, Stetson
• LL.M. (Tax) 1994, Florida

               

Having grown up as a Florida boy and receiving all my formal education there, I began teaching tax law at the age of 27. After completing the LL.M. program at Florida -- my classmates that year included David Brennan (Georgia), Sam Donaldson (Washington), and Darrell Jones (Stetson) -- I worked as an associate for Holland & Knight in Tampa, and in the evenings taught tax at Stetson. I soon learned of a visiting position at Idaho. I applied on the deadline, received an offer within a week, gave my firm two weeks’ notice, packed what I could in my Celica, and drove 3,000 miles to Moscow, Idaho.

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Anne-Marie Rhodes (Loyola-Chicago)

• B.A. 1973, Albertus Magnus College
• J.D. 1976, Harvard

             

 

I have always thought that I am one of the lucky ones, for I love what I do. Dealing with students and providing opportunities for them provides continual satisfaction and challenges. My teaching focuses on estate planning, estate and gift tax, wills and trusts, and basic income tax. In addition, I teach seminars in art law and international law.

I arrived at Loyola University Chicago by way of an interest in teaching long before law school, work in mathematics and art in college, and a conscious decision to learn estate planning while working at a large corporate law firm in Chicago. One day, the opportunity to teach full time at Loyola literally walked into my office.

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Martin Dickinson (Kansas)

• B.A. 1960, Kansas
• M.A. 1961, Stanford
• J.D. 1964, Michigan

            

 

When I graduated from law school, I had no interest in becoming a tax lawyer. Although my tax instructor (L. Hart Wright) was perhaps the most charismatic faculty member at Michigan, I didn’t find tax that interesting. Now, however, I look back happily on 42 years with the Internal Revenue Code–and more to come.    

It was fortuity that brought me to tax. When I joined Holme Roberts & Owen in Denver after graduation, I was assigned to the tax and estate planning department as my first rotation. These were intelligent, creative lawyers wrestling with fascinating puzzles. Soon I was hooked–as I still am.

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Myron Grauer (Capital)

• B.A. 1971, Vermont
• J.D. 1975, Pittsburgh
• LL.M. 1980, Yale

            

    

My career path has been one of turning failure to reach my teenage ambitions into the greatest job a law-trained person could ever hope for (and perhaps, just as Al Gore claims responsibility for the existence of the Internet, I can claim credit for the existence of TaxProf Blog and the TaxProf email listserv.

Now, I have to admit that being a teacher had always been my ambition; it just wasn’t being a law teacher. No, my goal as a teenager was to be both a ski instructor and a comic actor and theatre teacher.

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The Boston University Graduate Tax Program, established in 1959 as one of the first graduate tax programs in the nation, continues to be one of the best. It consistently ranks among the Top 10 tax programs. The program offers a broad and diverse curriculum, with five required courses and 33 electives and concentrations in three areas:

• Business Tax
• Estate Planning
• International Tax   

In a five-part series, TaxProf Blog profiled Boston University's full-time Tax Faculty:   

       

• Alan Feld
• Ernest Haddad
• William Park
• Ted Sims
• David Walker

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The Boston University Graduate Tax Program, established in 1959 as one of the first graduate tax programs in the nation, continues to be one of the best. It consistently ranks among the Top 10 tax programs. The program offers a broad and diverse curriculum, with five required courses and 33 electives and concentrations in three areas:

• Business Tax
• Estate Planning
• International Tax   

In this five-part series, TaxProf Blog will profile Boston University's full-time Graduate Tax Faculty.

   

David I. Walker joined the BU faculty in 2002. He straddles the divide between corporate and tax law, teaching both and often doing research on topics that fall at the intersection of the two disciplines, such as executive compensation. Recent work has added a third leg to this stool - corporate accounting. For example, his paper Financial Accounting and Corporate Behavior, recently posted on SSRN and blogged here, examines the effect of accounting (and tax) on the behavior of managers and their firms. Other work in progress includes an empirical investigation of the interplay between tax, accounting, and corporate governance; an economic analysis of the stock option backdating phenomenon; and a study of regulatory tax penalties.

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The Boston University Graduate Tax Program, established in 1959 as one of the first graduate tax programs in the nation, continues to be one of the best. It consistently ranks among the Top 10 tax programs. The program offers a broad and diverse curriculum, with five required courses and 33 electives and concentrations in three areas:

• Business Tax
• Estate Planning
• International Tax   

In this five-part series, TaxProf Blog will profile Boston University's full-time Graduate Tax Faculty.

   

Theodore S. Sims first taught at the BU as a visiting professor during the spring of 1990 while on leave from George Washington and pursuing coursework towards a Ph.D. in economics at MIT. Since returning to the BU faculty in 1996, he has taught a number of courses in the tax field and in trusts and estates, as well as a survey course in social scientific methods.

Professor Sims’s recent writing includes work on game theory, the relationship between tax-motivated behavior and stock market returns, and the treatment of cancellation of indebtedness income.

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The Boston University Graduate Tax Program, established in 1959 as one of the first graduate tax programs in the nation, continues to be one of the best. It consistently ranks among the Top 10 tax programs. The program offers a broad and diverse curriculum, with five required courses and 33 electives and concentrations in three areas:

• Business Tax
• Estate Planning
• International Tax   

In this five-part series, TaxProf Blog will profile Boston University's full-time Graduate Tax Faculty.

   

William W. Park (known as Rusty) joined the B.U. Faculty in 1979 after five years of corporate practice in Paris and two years teaching at Cambridge lecturing on public international and “company” law. In addition to international tax, he teaches arbitration and international business transactions, and served for three years as Director of the Law School’s Center for Banking and Financial Law. He also has an interest in the interaction of law and religion.

Visiting appointments permitted him to teach tax in Dijon, Hong Kong, Geneva, and the Fletcher School. On several occasions he took leaves from the Law School to serve as counsel to a commercial banking group based in Switzerland.

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The Boston University Graduate Tax Program, established in 1959 as one of the first graduate tax programs in the nation, continues to be one of the best. It consistently ranks among the Top 10 tax programs. The program offers a broad and diverse curriculum, with five required courses and 33 electives and concentrations in three areas:

• Business Tax
• Estate Planning
• International Tax   

In this five part series, TaxProf Blog will profile Boston University's full-time Graduate Tax Faculty.

 

As Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Ernest M. Haddad is responsible BU's Graduate Tax Program, Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law, and Office of Foreign Programs. These departments offer a number of academic programs and services, including LL.M. degrees in American Law, Banking and Financial Law, Intellectual Property Law and Taxation.

Dean Haddad graduated from Trinity College in 1960 and BU in 1964. After two years of law firm practice, he returned to BU Law to serve as assistant dean.

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The Boston University Graduate Tax Program, established in 1959 as one of the first graduate tax programs in the nation, continues to be one of the best. It consistently ranks among the Top 10 tax programs. The program offers a broad and diverse curriculum, with five required courses and 33 electives and concentrations in three areas:

• Business Tax
• Estate Planning
• International Tax   

In this five part series, TaxProf Blog will profile Boston University's full-time Graduate Tax Faculty.

 

A member of the faculty since 1971, Alan L. Feld has testified before a number of congressional committees on issues surrounding tax laws. Before coming to Boston University, he practiced tax and corporate law at two New York firms: Barrett Knapp Smith & Schapiro and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

   

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Elena Marty-Nelson (Nova)

• B.S. 1980, Miami
• J.D. 1983, Georgetown
• LL.M. (Tax) 1986, Georgetown

         

   

I knew very early on that I wanted to be a lawyer and a teacher. I left Cuba as a child in the care of my grandparents. My grandfather–who helped raise me until I was reunited with my parents–was my inspiration. He had been general counsel for two banks in Cuba but felt he was too old (and too broke) when he came here to learn a new legal system. So, although he loved the law, he was never able to practice in this country. As is typical of many immigrants, he also put his faith in education. He explained that no matter what happens no one can take away your education and what is in your head. The best way I thought I could honor him would be to become both a lawyer and a teacher. I decided to do it for him–but really it has been terrific for me.

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Kimberly Stanley (Golden Gate)

• B.S. 1978, BYU
• J.D. 1985, George Washington
• LL.M. (Tax) 1989, Georgetown

   

         

One of the joys of teaching Federal Income Tax in our JD program is seeing a student who has no particular connection to tax law come to the realization of how fun it can be. That was my experience. As a first-semester 2L at George Washington University Law School, I enrolled in a tax class only because I had met a Tax Court judge, Steve Swift, who was SO enthusiastic about tax law that I became intrigued. Before law school I taught high school history and my only real exposure to tax law was filling out my annual Form 1040EZ. But as I sat in class that semester, I could hardly believe how interesting and topical the subject was, and how much I enjoyed it – once I got over the fear of not being able to “crunch the numbers,” I was hooked.

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Katherine T. Pratt (Loyola-L.A.)

• B.A. 1978, Florida
• J.D. 1984, UCLA
• LL.M. (Tax) 1989, NYU
• LL.M. (Corporate Law) 1990, NYU

      

My father used to say that I had to become a lawyer because, in his entire life, he had been beaten in an argument by only three people, one of whom was a child – me. My route to law school was indirect, however. In college, I participated on an intercollegiate speech team, but later majored in psychology. In my senior year at the University of Florida, I worked on several experiments in the areas of physiological psychology and cognitive psychology. My psychology professors understandably assumed that I would continue on to graduate school in psychology, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after college. A wide range of public policy issues intrigued me. Also, I was interested in nutrition and exercise physiology, took 30 hours of dance classes, and was a member of the University Dance Company. I knew that I would attend graduate school, but was unsure about what type of graduate school I wanted to attend. Psychology graduate school, law school, and business school all were in the running. I even toyed with the idea of becoming a nutritionist or physical therapist. I thought that some work experience might help me decide which professional path to take and I wanted to see a bit of the world before applying to graduate school.

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