Cozen O'Connor taps tax attorney veteran for Philadelphia team

Cozen O’Connor has expanded its public and project finance practice with the addition of nationally recognized tax attorney Jeremy Spector to its Philadelphia office.

Spector arrives at Cozen four months after retiring as executive director of New Jersey Educational Facilities Authority. He previously spent 28 years as a public finance tax attorney at Mintz Levin and Blank Rome LLP.

“I couldn’t resist getting back into the practice of tax law full-time,” said Spector, a former chair of the American Bar Association's Tax Exempt Financing Committee. “I’m thrilled to be here.”

Spector guided the NJEFA in 2016 during a record year for the conduit issuer that featured $1.35 billion debt sold and an average transaction size exceeding $100 million. Prior to taking the helm at the NJEFA, Spector was honored as Best Lawyers' 2014 New York City Public Finance Law "Lawyer of the Year” while at Mintz Levin. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel, the American College of Bond Counsel and a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

“We are thrilled to have a tax practitioner of Jerry's stature joining our practice,' said Suzanne Mayes, chair of the Public & Project Finance practice. “Our clients will benefit tremendously from the depth of his public finance tax prowess.”

Cozen was Pennsylvania’s fourth-ranked bond counsel firm in 2016 with legal service provided to $1.3 billion by par amount from 14 deals, according to Thomson Reuters data. It was one of the law firms that represented the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in a winning case at the City of Harrisburg’s bankruptcy petition in 2011.