Andrea S. Kramer is a partner in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP. She is based in its Chicago office and is a member of its Tax Department. Andie is head of McDermott’s Financial Products, Trading and Derivatives Group and is co‑chair of its Energy Services Group. She is a member of the Firm's Management Committee and is chair of its Gender Diversity Committee. From 2004 to 2007, she was a member of the Firm’s five-person Compensation Committee.
Professional Recognition
In 2007, Andie was named one of the 50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal. She was selected because of her national impact in her field of practice and her “demonstrated power to change the legal landscape, shape public affairs, launch industries, and do big things.” In 2008, Andie was included in the tax section of The Legal 500 as “a determined and knowledgeable” tax lawyer in the field of derivatives. Also in 2008, Andie was included in The Best Lawyers in America. In June 2007, Lawdragon featured Andie as one of the Top 500 Leading Dealmakers, and in September 2007 Lawdragon featured her as one of the 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Andie was rated by her peers as one of the Top 50 Female Lawyers (2005) and a Super Lawyer in tax (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008). She was recognized as a Leading Corporate Lawyer in Crain’s Chicago Business (2005, 2006) and as one of the Top 100 Leading Women Lawyers in Illinois by the Leading Lawyers Network Magazine (2007, 2008). Andie is listed in Who’s Who in American Law (2005, 2006, 2007), Cambridge Who’s Who (2008), and Madison’s Who’s Who (2008). She is a life member of the National Registry of Who’s Who (2000).
Legal Practice
The focus of Andie’s legal practice is the multifaceted world of derivative financial products: their taxation, management, trading, regulation, and documentation. Her practice has four broad aspects. First, she advises financial service firms, multinational businesses, insurance companies, energy companies, public utilities, power marketers, and hedge funds on a full range of derivatives matters. She assists their businesses in preparing tax hedge and trading policies, risk management procedures, and guidance for senior management and directors as to their obligations with respect to derivatives activities. She provides advice to her clients as to appropriate legal, regulatory, and tax compliance policies and procedures, and frequently negotiates complicated structured derivative transactions on their behalf.
Second, Andie works with high net worth taxpayers and family offices in structuring and managing their derivatives transactions. She drafted the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's White Paper, High Net Worth Individuals: Tax Reference Guide for Futures, Options, and Other Derivatives. She also drafted the tax sections of the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s White Paper, High Net Worth Investors & Listed Options: Portfolio Management Strategies for Affluent Investors, Family Offices, and Trust Companies. Most recently, she assisted the Charles Schwab Corporation in drafting its White Paper, Tax Considerations for Equity Investors Using Derivatives.
Third, she devotes a substantial part of her practice to representing taxpayers in contested matters with the IRS. Andie works with clients to develop strategies at audit and in responding to IRS requests for information. She represents clients on appeal from IRS determinations and in litigation. She is currently working with several hedge fund managers, both domestic and offshore, in ongoing tax audits.
And fourth, since the early 1980s, Andie has worked to shape legislative and regulatory policy with respect to the taxation and regulation of derivative products. She represented The Options Policy Association in its effort to shape legislation dealing with the taxation of exchange-traded options. She represented a coalition of energy trading companies in their efforts to shape the tax hedging rules as applied to commodity trading. She represented the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America in its efforts to conceive and draft legislative language to protect dealers in commodity derivatives from adverse tax consequences. And she represented the Weather Risk Management Association in drafting comment letters to the CFTC and Treasury Department that addressed the appropriate tax treatment of weather derivatives activities.
Publications, Presentations and Teaching
Andie is the author of Financial Products: Taxation, Regulation, and Design (CCH, 2006), a three-volume, 3,600-page treatise that is supplemented annually. As the leading treatise on financial products law, this book has been cited over 80 times by courts and tax commentators. Andie most recently co-edited and contributed three chapters to the book Energy and Environmental Trading: US Law and Taxation (Cameron May, July 2008). She has written over 120 articles on topics including derivative taxation, operational and reputational risk in trading derivatives, insurance coverage versus use of derivatives, energy trading, and corporate governance. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming book from Oxford University Press entitled Energy and Environmental Project Finance Law and Taxation: New Investment Techniques. She was co‑editor‑in‑chief of CCH’s quarterly Journal of Taxation of Financial Products for the first six years of its publication (2000 to 2006).
Andie is a frequent speaker at conferences and workshops, having made over 240 presentations on trading activities, hedging, and derivatives. She has developed and conducts multiple day training courses on the documentation and negotiation of derivative transactions, managing legal and operational risks of derivatives trading, taxation of financial products, and foreign currency tax issues. She is quoted frequently on tax and trading issues, most recently by the National Law Journal, Global Finance, Fidelity, Tax Notes Today, Inc. Magazine, and Chicago Lawyer.
In 2008, Andie conducted a two-day workshop on credit derivatives in Singapore to provide participants with an in-depth understanding of the global credit derivatives markets and credit derivative documentation, focusing on negotiations, reducing backlog, and addressing legal risk.
For the last 30 years, Andie has been invited to address the Treasury Department and the IRS on a wide range of financial product issues. She has conducted workshops on asset-backed securities, an interactive five-hour teleconference on the taxation of financial products (with 2,500 IRS agents attending throughout the United States), and most recently, a series of half-day training courses as part of the IRS’s internal training program for its financial product specialists, industry specialists, and senior employees.
Andie is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University School of Law. She teaches “Taxation of Financial Derivatives” in Northwestern’s Graduate Tax Program and the documentation of derivatives as part of “Derivatives: Design, Regulation, and Documentation,” a course that is open to students in the law school and the J. L. Kellogg School of Management.
Professional Leadership
Andie served on the Tax Executive Committee of the Chicago Bar Association (CBA) and chaired its Division on Tax Shelters, Real Estate, and Partnerships. She is a member of the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL), the Energy Bar Association (EBA), the Women’s Council on Energy and the Environment (WCEE), the International Bar Association (IBA) Section on Business Law (Committee on Issues and Trading in Securities), the International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE), and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association’s (ISDA’s) Committee on North American Tax. Andie served on the International Finance Advisory Board for the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business and the board of advisors for the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Stuart School of Business, Financial Markets & Trading Program. She was a founding member of the Financial Innovation Study Committee/Weird Instrument Study Committee (a group of attorneys, accountants, regulators, and economists that studied, on an interdisciplinary basis, financial products and derivatives).
Promoting Gender Diversity
Andie has committed herself to improving gender diversity in law firms and professional service firms. She has spoken over the past five years at more than 20 national diversity conferences, trade association meetings, and professional service firms on the importance of assuring women equal access to career opportunities and leadership roles. She played a leading role in developing the Chicago Bar Association’s “Call to Action,” a program designed to increase employment and advancement opportunities for women lawyers. She served on the working group that developed the metrics to evaluate compliance with the CBA's Call to Action goals.
In an effort to promote diversity on corporate boards, Andie serves as a Lifetime Friend, Chicago Friend, and Chicago Advisory Council member of Boardroom Bound, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering good governance, independence, and diversity in corporate boardrooms.
Andie is a member of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), an organization that helps women advance their businesses by sharing resources and economic and public policy ideas. Andie is a member of the National Association of Professional Women (NAPW), an organization that provides a global platform to encourage women to voice their opinions and share their thoughts on family, economic and political issues. She is a member of 100 Women in Hedge Funds, a global association of more than 8,000 professional women. Through the volunteer efforts of its members, this organization seeks to make a difference in the hedge fund industry with unique educational programming, professional development initiatives and philanthropy.
In 2006, Andie co-founded the Women’s Leadership and Mentoring Alliance (WLMA) to bring professional women in Chicago together to network, mentor, and support leadership opportunities for younger women. Interest in WLMA has grown across the country. To facilitate its expansion, Andie now serves as a founding board member of the recently incorporated WLMA, Inc. and is working with professional women in New York and Los Angeles to establish WLMA chapters in their communities.
In October 2006, Andie received McDermott's Star Mentor Award for her work with women throughout the firm, her initiation of the firm’s Women’s Leadership Series, and her efforts to enhance the working environment for women within the firm.
Charitable and Community Service
Andie is a founding board member and chair of the board of The Women’s Treatment Center (TWTC), a Chicago-based residential and outpatient treatment facility for alcohol and substance abuse. In February 1998, Andie received an award from TWTC for her contribution to the lives of TWTC’s women and children. In May 2007, TWTC presented Andie with its first Founders Award for her involvement in founding TWTC, the acquisition of its facilities, and her more than 16 years of support of TWTC’s mission. During her tenure as board chair, TWTC has significantly expanded its programs and services and reduced the barriers that pregnant women and women with small children face in obtaining help with substance abuse.
Andie recently joined the board of the Chicago Foundation for Women, one of the largest women’s funds in the world, which is dedicated to the principle that all women and girls should have the opportunity to realize their full potential and live in safe, just, and healthy communities. She is a former member of the board of directors of DanceArt, an organization providing dance and communication training to at-risk children in Chicago.
Andie serves on the Executive Planning Committee of the Eamon Shannon Special Education Program, which works with the Pro Bono Center for Disability and Elder Law to provide legal services to children with special needs who have been denied appropriate educational services. She worked with McDermott to set the Special Education Program up as an approved pro bono program, and she has actively encouraged her colleagues to represent special needs students to obtain acceptable individualized educational plans. Personally, she successfully represented a special needs student who sought to receive needed educational support initially denied by his school district.
In recognition of her outstanding community service, in 2004 the Cook County Board of Commissioners awarded Andie its Unsung Heroine Award. In 2007 Andie received the prestigious Women of Achievement Award from the Anti-Defamation League for her professional accomplishments, her efforts on behalf of at-risk women and children, and her vigorous advocacy of equal opportunities for women in the workplace. In October 2007, Andie was enrolled by McDermott in its “Partner Pro Bono Honor Roll” for her work on pro bono and community service initiatives.
Education
As an undergraduate at University of Illinois, Andie was Phi Beta Kappa, received the Bronze Tablet Award, and graduated summa cum laude and with high distinction in history. While in law school at Northwestern University School of Law, she was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology and graduated cum laude. She is admitted to practice before the United States Tax Court, the United States Court of Federal Claims, the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Education
- Northwestern University School of Law, J.D. (cum laude), 1978
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1975
