Diana L. Leyden (Connecticut)
- B.A. 1978, Union College
- J.D. 1982, Connecticut
- LL.M. (Tax) 1984, Georgetown
Diana Leyden is an Associate Clinical Professor at Connecticut and the director of its Tax Clinic, a low income taxpayer clinic. In addition to teaching the Tax Clinic program, Diana has taught federal income tax and corporate tax.
The road to law school and tax was filled with serendipity. After completing a college thesis applying the work of George Katona in the field of behavioral economics to the Soviet Union’s planned economy and predicting the downfall of the planned economy, she was asked to continue in a masters program to do further research. But, she decided she had had enough of academia and declined. Then, unemployed, she found a job as the first paralegal hired by a Waterbury, Connecticut firm (Carmody & Torrance) and started working with two wonderful, mentoring attorneys in their trusts and estate practice. At their elbows, she learned about the estate and gifts taxes and was smitten with tax law.
When she entered the University of Connecticut School of Law she knew she wanted to concentrate in tax law. She was challenged by Professor Richard Pomp and Professor Lester Snyder to apply for a clerkship at the United States Tax Court. Clerking for Judge Herbert Chabot at the Tax Court she honed her statutory interpretation skills and came to appreciate Gilbert and Sullivan.
For the next fifteen years, Diana’s tax practice was enriched by private practice at Steptoe & Johnson (Washington, D.C.) and Day, Berry & Howard (Boston), and government work as a hearing officer and manager at the Massachusetts Department of Revenue and a staff attorney in the legal division of the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services. Most of her work concentrated in corporate income tax and sales tax. However, it made her realize the tremendous divide between tax advice for the wealthy and the poor.
As she began exploring a proposal to her alma mater to start a tax clinic, RRA 98 was passed creating grants for low income taxpayer clinics. In 1999, she wrote the first grant for the Law School’s tax clinic, was hired and has been the Director since its inception.
An active participant in the ABA Tax Section, including the past chair of the Low Income Taxpayer Committee and a current vice chair of the Pro Bono Committee, Diana has been able to feed her passion for advocating for increased pro bono work by tax attorneys. One of her most treasured moment was being nominated by her students, and receiving, the ABA Tax Section 2005 Pro Bono Award. She is currently working on a casebook for Low Income Taxpayer Clinics and a popular book on the case stories of her former clients.
When she is not advocating for her clients, training the IRS, or pursuing FOIA requests against the IRS, she is a wife to Philip Sussler, her husband of 21 years who she met in law school, the mother to two teenage daughters, one of whom wants to pursue a career in movie and theatre costume design, and the other a career as a journalist, and the owner of an adopted, very neurotic Bishon Frise. Does the fact that neither of her daughters wants to be attorneys upset her? “No. Two attorneys in the family are enough.”
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