Julie K. Kwon is a partner for the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP and is based in the Firm’s Silicon Valley office. She focuses her practice on advising clients regarding a broad range of estate planning issues, including estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax issues; charitable planning and exempt organization compliance; trust and estate administration; contested trust and tax matters; and construction and reformation of wills and trusts.
Immediately prior to joining the Firm, Julie was the Philanthropic Advisor for Stanford University, where she collaborated with the Office of General Counsel and other members to resolve legal and tax issues arising from charitable trust investment and administration, complex gifts and bequests, contested matters and endowment management, and worked with donors to fulfill their charitable objectives. Previously, she was a director in the Wealth Management Group of Bernstein Global Wealth Management, where she developed quantitative research regarding the effect of investment volatility on wealth transfer; and was the fiduciary counsel and Legacy Planner for the Midwest Region for Bessemer Trust Company.
Julie is co-author of the tax treatise, “Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax” (by Harrington, Plaine, Zaritsky & Kwon, for Warren Gorham & Lamont), and is a frequent speaker and author on estate planning topics for professional organizations and publications, which have included Journal of Taxation and Trusts & Estates magazines, the Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, the Notre Dame Tax & Estate Planning Institute, the Internal Revenue Service, the American Bar Association (ABA), the American Law Institute – American Bar Association, and numerous regional organizations around the country.
Julie currently is Chair of the Income & Transfer Tax Planning Group of the ABA, Real Property, Trust & Estate Section; in addition, she is the past chair of the Estate & Gift Tax Committee and past co-chair of the GST Tax Committee of the Section. Julie is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Trusts & Estates Section of the State Bar of California. She also serves on the Estate Planning Advisory Panel of the American Law Institute – American Bar Association, and is a former director and board member of the Chicago Estate Planning Council and a former member of the Professional Advisory Council of the Chicago Community Trust.
Julie has been ranked nationally as a leading wealth management lawyer by Chambers USA.
Julie received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was Executive Editor of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, and her B.A., with distinction, from Stanford University.
Julie is admitted to practice in California and Illinois.
Education
- Yale Law School, J.D., 1996
- Stanford University, B.A. (with distinction), 1993
