For over 30 years, the University of Florida Graduate Tax Program has been one of the nation’s leading programs for the advanced study of tax law. Among the country’s 30 graduate tax programs, Florida has by far the largest number of full-time faculty and is the only school to offer three advanced tax degrees:
Graduate tax students assist in the publication of the Florida Tax Review, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed tax journals in the country. In this 12-part series, TaxProf Blog will profile the Florida Graduate Tax Faculty.
David M. Richardson’s freshman year of college was spent at the University of Virginia where I became interested in Physics. That interest, bolstered somewhat by the fact that my high school sweetheart, Regina, was at Smith College, resulted in my transfer to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. After graduating in 1961, I headed to the University of Florida for a graduate degree in Physics. On the way, Regina, who had also just graduated, and I got married by a Justice of the Peace in Georgia.
A second language was needed for a graduate degree and after my first year as a “Gator”, we went to Munich to study German. While there I began to think that law, possibly patent law, might be interesting and I applied to, and was accepted at, Columbia Law School. So, in the summer of 1962, we boarded the SS United States, with our newborn son, and traveled to New York City.
In my second year at Columbia, I had the good fortune to take the basic income tax course from Dean William Warren. Although we studied the rules, what made his course interesting to me was his emphasis on the underlying policy. During the following summer, I worked in the offices of Roberts & Holland in New York, on a PLI monograph that Sidney Roberts and Dean Warren were writing on U.S. Taxation of Foreign Corporations and Nonresident Aliens.
After graduating from law school in 1966, we moved to Miami, with our then three year old son, our two year old daughter and our second son, who was then one year old. I had received two offers, one from the largest law firm in town for $7,500 a year and the other from a tax boutique for $7,800 a year. As you might imagine, with a wife and three children to support and a mortgage to pay, the extra $5.77 a week was a strong inducement to take the higher offer. The senior partner in that firm was Hugh Culverhouse. Although he didn’t offer me an interest in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when he acquired that franchise, he later created the Hugh F. Culverhouse Eminent Scholar Chair in Taxation at the University of Florida College of Law That Chair is now occupied by one of our most eminent scholars, Larry Lokken.
After three years at the Culverhouse firm, we moved to Princeton, New Jersey while I worked on an LL.M. in taxation at NYU. Not long after we returned from Princeton, I accepted Phil Heckerling’s invitation to become an adjunct professor at the University of Miami and teach a tax law. That experience, which lasted five years, was both more work and more fun than I had anticipated.
After four more years with the Culverhouse firm, I joined Roberts & Holland and opened the firm’s Miami office. This led to a confrontation with The Florida Bar. The Bar opposed “interstate firms” and we, and the other New York firm that opened up an office at the same time, wound up before the Florida Supreme Court. The Florida Bar, which was represented during oral argument by its immediate past president, current president and president elect, explained to the Court that the Bar was concerned about the unlawful practice of law by persons not admitted to practice in Florida. The real reason, of course, was fear of competition. With the help of an unsolicited, very strong statement by former ABA President Chesterfield Smith, in opposition to establishing a “closed shop” in Florida, the Court rejected the Bar’s proposed ban on interstate firms. Many out-of-state firms now have offices in Florida, and the Bar seems to be prospering.
Eight years later, Monte Jackel, who had joined the Miami office, and I left Roberts & Holland and became the tax department of a Miami firm comprised mostly of U.S. trained Cuban lawyers. We did a lot of work for Central and South American clients. Two years later, during a conversation with Professor Jack Foreland about the Florida Bar Tax Certification Program, which I then chaired, Jack told me that the University of Florida Law School was looking for a Director for its Tax Program. On a whim, and at his suggestion, I applied the next day – which was the cut-off day for applications. A few weeks later, after a visit to Gainesville, I was offered, and accepted the job. In July of 1984 we moved to Gainesville and I again became a Gator. The worst thing that happened as a result of the move was that we forgot to tell our oldest son, who was then studying in Moscow, about my new job and that we were moving. When he got back to Miami, he had to call friends of ours to find out where we were. It took several years to convince him that we weren’t trying to hide from him.
For the last several years, I have served on the Board of Editors of the LexisNexis Graduate Tax Series. A number of years ago, Paul Caron, the Series Editor, recognized the lack of course materials designed specifically for graduate tax programs. Paul and I and the other Board members – Ellen Aprill, Elliott Manning and Philip Postlewaite – spent about two years working out the concept and negotiating with LexisNexis (which has strongly supported the project). Last year, Jerry Borison, Steve Johnson and I published the first book in the Series on civil tax procedure. Two other books in the Series have since been published and five or six more are under contract.
Now, twenty-two years after becoming a Gator for the second time, I plan to retire after this semester. I have been extremely fortunate, in both my practice of law and as a teacher, to have worked with and learned from some extraordinarily talented and dedicated tax lawyers. Looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.
For prior Florida Graduate Tax Faculty Profiles, see:
- Yariv Brauner
- Dennis A. Calfee
- Patricia E. Dilley
- Michael K. Friel
- David M. Hudson
- Lawrence Lokken
- Paul R. McDaniel
- Martin J. McMahon, Jr.
Each Saturday, TaxProf Blog shines the spotlight on one of the 700+ tax professors in America’s law schools. We hope to help bring the many individual stories of scholarly achievements, teaching innovations, public service, and career moves within the tax professorate to the attention of the broader tax community. Please email me suggestions for future Tax Prof Profiles. For prior Tax Prof Profiles, see here.
