2024 Distinguished Service Award Recipient

Richard M. Lipton

The Distinguished Service Award is the highest honor awarded by the Section of Taxation of the American Bar Association. The award is given to individuals who have had a distinguished career in taxation and who have provided an aspirational standard for all tax lawyers to emulate. The 2024 recipient of this award is Richard M. Lipton, in recognition of his outstanding service to the U.S. tax system.

Dick has had a distinguished career as a practitioner and scholar, demonstrating superior leadership qualities, expertise in partnership taxation, and willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. He has provided his clients with excellent service and given generously of his time to the legal profession in general and the Section of Taxation in particular.

Born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, Dick was destined to be a tax lawyer. From the age of 11 or 12, he was a regular reader of the Wall Street Journal’s weekly tax column and knew when he entered college that he would be a tax lawyer. Dick received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and his law degree from the University of Chicago, institutions to which he has contributed generously, including endowing the Richard Lipton Professor of Tax Law at the University of Chicago.

Dick notes that three women, in addition to Professor Walter Blum, a preeminent tax scholar at the University of Chicago with whom he studied, played particularly important roles in shaping his career as a tax lawyer. Professor Blum introduced Dick to the first, U.S. Tax Court Judge Cynthia Hall, for whom Dick went on to clerk. After his clerkship with Judge Hall, Dick went to work for a Chicago firm where he was mentored by the second, Sharon King, who took him to ABA Tax Section meetings. There he joined the General Income Tax Problems Committee, a small committee where Dick quickly rose to Chair, just in time for Congress to enact the Tax Reform Act of 1986, including the passive activity loss rules of Code Section 469. The Tax Section created a task force on Section 469, which Dick ably led. His leadership helped build his reputation within and beyond the Tax Section as a brilliant and thoughtful lawyer.

When Dick was elected to the Council of the Tax Section in 1990, his activities led him to work frequently with the third, Christine Brunswick, who served more than 25 years as Executive Director of the Tax Section. Together, Dick and Christine worked to establish a measure of financial independence for the Tax Section from the ABA that has allowed it over the years to support pro bono initiatives, the Law Student Tax Challenge, and programs that encourage young lawyers to become active in the Tax Section, in addition to keeping the cost of Tax Section programming as low as possible.

Dick briefly left the practice of law from 1986-1988 to enter the business world with his brother-in-law at a company called Pegasus Broadcasting but kept his involvement with the Tax Section. After Pegasus was sold, Dick returned to practice at another Chicago law firm, Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, now SNR Dentons. Until joining Sonnenschein, Dick had been a corporate tax lawyer, but Lou Freeman recruited Dick to advise on partnership tax, which meant Dick had to learn partnership law and partnership taxation. Dick’s timing was again impeccable. Around the time Dick joined Sonnenschein, the IRS ruled that limited liability companies should be taxed as partnerships, greatly expanding and simplifying the use of partnership structures in business transactions. Dick became a partnership tax lawyer for the remainder of his career. He has spent the last 20 years with Baker & McKenzie where he has continued to indulge his passion for partnership taxation and the most effective tax planning for his clients.

Dick served for 34 years on the Council of the Section of Taxation in multiple roles, including as Chair from 2001-2002 and as the Section’s Delegate to the ABA House of Delegates from 2005-2021. He was a voting member of the Council for 25 years, and whether voting or not, Dick has never hesitated to express his views on matters under consideration, oftentimes steering the debate in a new direction. During his time on the Council, Dick missed only two meetings, one due to a business conflict and one for health reasons. He currently serves on the Board of Governors of the ABA.

Perhaps the most significant of Dick’s Tax Section initiatives were the efforts to engage Tax Section members in pro bono activities and support for pro bono representation. The Section’s commitment to pro bono has grown since Dick’s initiatives with the establishment of the Tax Assistance Public Service Endowment and the Christine Brunswick Public Service Fellowship.

In addition to his service to clients and the ABA Tax Section, Dick has been a prolific author of scholarly articles, publishing two treatises (Passive Activity Losses and Partnership Taxation), more than 350 articles, and a regular column called "Shop Talk." It is Dick’s tax scholarship for which he may most be remembered. He holds the record—at 101—for number of articles published in consecutive issues of The Journal of Taxation. The previous record was three. Dick’s scholarship often challenged the government’s thinking or position in a case or administrative guidance. He never shied from telling the government when he disagreed, but skillfully and often with a bit of wit that earned him their respect and engagement. Like his criticism or not, Dick’s commentary provoked improvements to the government’s work product.

The Tax Section was not the only organization to which Dick devoted time and energy. Dick served as chair of the Federal Tax Committee of the Chicago Bar Association, as a Regent of the American College of Tax Counsel and, ultimately, as its Chair.

Through all of his professional endeavors, Dick has had the support of his lovely wife, Jane, who he met while umpiring in women’s softball league games in Chicago. He and Jane raised four children and have five grandchildren. Notwithstanding his dedication to work and the bar, Dick and Jane have managed to travel all around the world and have played golf together several times a week during their 42 year marriage.

As the foregoing demonstrates, Dick has made outstanding contributions throughout his distinguished career, for which he richly deserves the honor of being the 2024 recipient of the ABA Tax Section’s Distinguished Service Award.

—Pam Olson, Denver, Colorado