Law firm mergers and acquisitions often bring opportunities to grow law firms—but typically not the profession. A recent pairing in the tax world may be the exception. Kostelanetz LLP, a law firm headquartered in New York focusing on tax and white-collar criminal defense practices, has combined forces with Atlanta-based WELTY PC to expand its civil and criminal tax practice. But the merger has also created an opportunity to strengthen its ties to Spelman College in Atlanta—a historically Black college and university (HBCU) for women.
Kostelanetz
Kostelanetz LLP isn’t on the AmLaw list of the top 100 law firms in the country by size—but it has more tax controversy attorneys than most large firm practice groups. In fact, its tax bench is so deep that the firm says that large firms often call on it as co-counsel in some of the most complex and sensitive tax controversy cases. About half of the firm’s lawyers have significant government experience, including in the Department of Justice (DOJ) Tax Division, IRS Criminal Investigation, and IRS Office of Chief Counsel, making them a key draw for some clients in tax controversy, tax fraud, and white-collar criminal defense.
WELTY’s ten attorneys and three litigation support personnel will add to that mix. That made a partnership with the firm, helmed by experienced tax controversy litigator Todd Welty, appealing.
“Todd is a terrific lawyer, with an unmatched reputation for handling — and winning — some of the largest and most complex civil tax matters,” said Kostelanetz partner Bryan Skarlatos. “So uniting our two groups of veteran tax attorneys into the most experienced tax controversy practice in the country was a very easy decision.”
WELTY brought something additional to the table: an Atlanta office. Having a significant presence in Georgia’s capital will also allow Kostelanetz to strengthen its ties to Spelman College.
Spelman College was founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary and became Spelman College in 1924. Today, the college is home to more than 2,100 students from 43 states and ten foreign countries, and counts Presidential Freedom medal winner Marian Wright Edelman, activist Bernice King, and Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Alice Walker as former students.
The historically Black liberal arts college for women is the No. 1 ranked HBCU by U.S. News & World Report and comes in at No. 383 on Forbes‘ list of America’s Top Colleges, which showcases 500 of the finest U.S. colleges, ranked using data on student success, return on investment and alumni influence.
It has also been a great source of talent for the Kostelanetz firm since 2021 when it expanded its Pre-Law Paralegal Program for high-achieving college graduates to include an internship for pre-law undergraduates at Spelman College.
Pre-Law Paralegal Program
Claude M. Millman, a civil litigation partner at Kostelanetz’s New York office, explains that the firm has always been focused on finding extraordinary talent to deliver to clients. That was a driving factor in creating its Pre-Law Paralegal Program, which graduated its first alums in 2018.
As part of that two-year program, paralegals work closely with lawyers and attend frequent training sessions, which include overviews of law school courses—like torts, contracts, criminal law, and property law—and advice on how to “brief” court opinions and “outline” law school classes. It’s a paid position with a starting salary of $70,000 per year, based on a 35-hour workweek. Pre-law paralegals are also eligible for end-of-year bonuses and a salary increase in their second year to a base of $77,000.
Pre-law paralegals also receive time off for LSAT studying and law school admissions days. Alumni of the program have gone on to attend top law schools, including Berkeley, Columbia, Emory, Harvard, and Stanford.
Millman says the program allows the firm to “attract extraordinary people who have ideas the rest of us would not have come up with,” adding, “especially in tech.” Noting that getting one-on-one time with the IRS can be challenging, he cites an example of a paralegal’s idea to record a presentation and email it to the IRS representative.
The Spelman-Kostelanetz Connection
The pre-law paralegal program has proved to be a success—but something was missing. In 2020, a new associate and civil litigator, Dan Davidson, asked if the firm would consider recruiting from HCBUs. There was, he suggested, a lot of great talent that the firm was “literally missing out on.”
That led them to Spelman. The Spelman internship program is an expansion of the existing Pre-Law Paralegal Program. It’s designed to ensure that clients benefit from the extraordinary talent available at Spelman while simultaneously promoting diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and the tax law bar.
Like the paralegal program, the Spelman internship program is paid. After graduation and completion of the internship, students are typically offered a full-time, pre-law paralegal position, with the option to spend one or two years with the firm before enrolling in law school.
Millman initially connected on LinkedIn with Destiny Reese, who was then serving as president of the Morehouse-Spelman Pre-Law Society (MSPLS).(Morehouse is a sort of sibling college to Spelman—a private men’s HBCU with about 2,200 students located in downtown Atlanta.)
Millman asked Reese how they could reach out to students. Reese ended up becoming the first intern in the new program—after graduating summa cum laude from Spelman College in May of 2021, she interned at Kostelanetz before heading to law school. While at Kostelanetz, she authored a piece on “Increasing Diversity in Tax Law,” published in The Federal Lawyer magazine (see page 26).
A Georgia native, she wasn’t sold on staying in the state. But, she says, she went to Spelman’s “A Day In Your Life” (a program for potential students) and said, “I immediately fell in love.” She was drawn to the idea that it was a space “with people who look like you, who are very smart.”
When she connected with Millman, she initially planned on simply sharing information about the program with the Society’s members. But then, she thought, “Maybe I should give it a shot.”
She didn’t exactly know what tax law was—she just knew that when she became a lawyer, she wanted to help enact change, especially in communities that had been marginalized historically. But as she found out more, she loved not only the policy pieces, but figuring out the complexity of the tax code. “There are so many layers,” she says.
Reese is currently a summer associate and rising 3L at Emory University School of Law, where she has served as President of the Tax Law Society, Secretary of the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers, and managing editor of Emory Law Journal.
She’s also a big fan of the program, calling it “so unique and so powerful.” There isn’t, she explains, “anything like it in the country.”
Kostelanetz also provides financial assistance—they’re a sponsor—to the MSPLS. As a sponsor, the firm connects directly with the organization’s student leaders to co-create events and panels that align with the firm’s goals and students’ interests. Recent programming has included a resume workshop and mock interviews to help students prepare for employment and law school applications.
Fresh off Reese’s success, Kostelanetz welcomed Grace Hall—who also graduated summa cum laude from Spelman College—in 2022 as the program’s second intern. Hall has spent two summers at Kostelanetz and is headed to the University of Virginia School of Law this year to finish her third year there.
Our perspective,” Millman explains, “is that we are already recruiting from lots of schools.” Talent, he notes, isn’t just to be found in one or two places. “We are going to the places where the students we want to recruit are,” he says. “These extraordinary students happen to have chosen HBCUs.”
The hope, he says, is that if you invest in people, they will remain connected to the firm. It’s working—several students, including Reese and Hall, have returned as summer interns or clerks.
Current paralegals in the program include Nadya Lopez and Melina Watson—both who joined the firm as spring 2023 interns after graduating summa cum laude from Spelman.
The firm’s incoming summer intern is Brittany Mahone, who will be a senior at Spelman in the fall.
The Welty Merger
This is where the Welty merger is icing on the cake. In addition to the talent benefits of the merger, Kostelanetz is picking up a tangible benefit: a physical space in Atlanta. The firm intends to keep offices in Atlanta, which will help it expand its practice and strengthen its connections with Spelman (and Morehouse, which participates in some of the programming). It is, Millman says, “an exciting opportunity.”
Reese agrees, calling the news exciting and saying it will benefit those new to the program. “Some things you cannot do virtually,” she explains. There is nothing like learning from attorneys in person, she says.
Hall echoes Reese, saying that the increased exposure benefits the program. She loves the D.C. area (she’s based out of the D.C. office) but is glad to have options. She still loves Atlanta, she says.
Moving Forward
Reese isn’t decided on what she will do next, but it will definitely be in tax law—she’s leaning toward tax planning and compliance. She may also return to Atlanta (she’s in the D.C. office for the summer). She’s hoping that Kostelanetz will continue to grow its relationship with Spelman beyond the internship program.
Hall is hopeful, too. She says the program helped her realize how much of a team effort the practice of law requires. She explains that lawyers do everything by themselves on TV and in movies, but her time at Kostelanetz made her realize the value of having a team to rely on.
She hadn’t even considered tax law initially but quickly realized how much tax touches every element of society every day, everywhere. She loves the idea of solving complex problems and thinks she may want to pursue a career in tax litigation and white-collar defense work.
It’s clear that the program has made a difference to the pair. Millman likes to think that experience has been similar across the board—including for the attorneys at the firm. He says about the program, “In our best dreams, this could not have been better.”
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