CHICAGO — Chicago-based law firm Pugh, Jones & Johnson PC has brought in attorney Lorraine Tyson to replace veteran bond lawyer Scott Bremer, who left two months ago.
Tyson, a tax specialist, will leave Chicago’s Mayer Brown LLP to join Pugh Jones’ four-member public finance team next week as a partner.
Bremer left Pugh in July to join Milwaukee-based Quarles & Brady LLP as a partner in its Chicago office. He had worked as a tax attorney specializing in rendering section 103 opinions at Pugh Jones since 2001.
“We lost a very good tax attorney in Scott Bremer,” said Stephen Pugh, who founded the minority-owned firm 20 years ago. “Lorraine Tyson is a younger version of that. There are probably only one or two minority law firms in the country that can render a tax opinion under Section 103, so it’s a pretty important move for us.”
Pugh said it’s difficult for many minority firms to capture tax attorneys, who generally join larger bond counsel firms.
Tyson, 37, joins the firm after nearly eight years at Mayer Brown. Before that, she was at Chapman and Cutler LLP for more than four years. While at there, she earned a master’s degree in tax law degree from Northwestern University, and is one of the few female and minority tax attorneys working in Chicago.
“I’m going to Pugh Jones because I am going to have the opportunity to be the Section 103 attorney and also to help them grow their public finance practice to a national practice,” Tyson said.
The firm currently operates only its Chicago office, but is certified as a minority enterprise firms in a variety of states, including Wisconsin, New York, Nebraska and Indiana. The firm will consider opening offices in those states if it continues to grow, Pugh said.
Noting that bond counsel fees have dropped as much as 50% since he started in the field, she said that many of the larger firms have stopped chasing deals.
“A lot of the larger firms cannot do a bond deal profitably, and so our industry and our practice area is getting smaller,” Pugh said. “We hope to fill that space.”
Pugh Jones ranks seventh to date in 2011 among bond counsel firms on Illinois issuer deals and was ranked eighth in 2010, according to Thomson Reuters. It ranks 33rd among bond counsel so far this year in the Midwest and finished 21st last year.
