When I started out in 1979, ERISA was only four years old. Back then, practitioners joked it stood for “Every Ridiculous Idea Since Adam,” but it actually had the noble goal of making pensions more universal and fairer. I had never heard of it when I joined the tax department at Mayer Brown and Platt in Chicago. But I liked my law school tax courses, and they needed someone in the “compensation” group. Plus, they offered me the opportunity to spend a year learning the area with no billable hours. (I should have questioned why they would cut me such a deal, but it never occurred to me it was an area so complex that few wanted to tackle it.) At the time, I suppose I appreciated the “no billable hours” part more than the education, but now I know the year-long tutorial was an amazing gift that set me up for the next 45 years.
In 1981, our documents were individually designed, about 100 pages long, and typed by hand. If you wanted to make a strategic change that required addition of a few more lines, you thought long and hard about it because it might involve retyping 26 more pages. (And the wrath of the one typing it.) Then the firm introduced the miraculous “mag” typewriter with a memory card that could be inserted to reproduce a page which could be revised at will.
The plans had to be continually amended to comply with new laws and regulations. These were tacked on to the original documents, which made the documents more difficult to use. The IRS started requiring the amendments to be incorporated into a wholly new document periodically and sent to the IRS for approval, a “determination letter.”
In Chicago, my work was focused on huge corporations. Often, the design was determined by a consultant and my job was more scrivener than advisor. When my husband was offered a faculty position at UNC, I left the practice for Chapel Hill, the “Southern Part of Heaven” (ask Marty Brennaman). There I retreated from law practice and became a full-time lecturer in Business Law at NC State. Not only was it fun to interact with students, but we were in basketball nirvana. Jim Valvano had just won the NCAA championship at NCSU and Dean Smith was coaching Michael Jordan in Chapel Hill.
After five years teaching at NC State and watching great basketball at both schools, we were ready for the real world again. We moved to Cincinnati and I started at Strauss & Troy in January of 1988. By then, we had word processors to create documents. It was still a huge task, but I found I was much happier working with these plans. The sponsors were mainly owners of small businesses who wanted to reward their employees for their good work. I felt like a partner in that effort. That satisfaction level kept me at the firm for 38 years. That, and the challenge of ferreting through the maze of ERISA rules and regulations to keep my clients in compliance. To me, it was “brain candy.”
Today, the expansion of IRS pre-approved plans has made it easier for documents to be provided by third party administrators while sophisticated planning remains a challenging business for ERISA attorneys. I have given up that challenge after having enjoyed a lifetime of helping small business owners help themselves and their employees to retire comfortably.
Originally from upstate New York, Claudia Allen graduated from the University of Buffalo Law School in 1979. She spent 38 years at Strauss Troy and served as CBA Chair of the Tax Committee, and 30 years on the Admissions Committee. She also taught Employee Benefits at UC Law and served as advisor to the Center for Respite Care and Pro Seniors pension project.