The National Association of Bond Lawyers last week awarded Linda Schakel, a partner at Ballard Spahr in Washington, its Frederick O. Kiel Distinguished Service Award.
The award, established in 2002, recognizes attorneys for “extraordinary service” over a prolonged period of time.
Schakel served as NABL’s president from 2003 to 2004 and has been a faculty member or panelist for several of the group’s seminars.
She has worked on several tax-comment projects and for the last several years has written the tax column in The Bond Lawyer: The Journal of the National Association of Bond Lawyers.
“I’m kind of surprised. I’m very pleased,” Schakel said Monday. “There are a lot of people that put a lot of time into NABL and I’ve always felt as though I got my share of return on it. ... I think I’m a better lawyer and I’ve met a lot of interesting people.”
Schakel handles tax-exempt bond financings for 501(c)(3) organizations and also has served as tax counsel for empowerment zone financings.
She served as an attorney adviser in the Office of Tax Policy at the Treasury Department from 1995 to 1997, where she had primary responsibility for tax legislative and regulatory projects in the areas of tax-exempt bonds, low income housing tax credits, empowerment zones and enterprise communities, as well as work-opportunity tax credits and welfare-to-work tax credits.
Schakel has a law degree from Georgetown University, and a Ph.D and masters degree, both in education, from the University of South Florida. She received a bachelor of science degree from Iowa State University.
