Page 15 - MarchApril26 Report

Explore a regular feature that
highlights our experienced
attorneys and the unique
paths that lead them
to this chapter of their
legal career.
A Look Back
With Claudia Allen
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 docu-
ments. 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 administra-
tors 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 them-
selves 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.
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