Building Your Future at Holland & Knight: Jennifer Karpchuk's Move to Grow the State and Local Tax Practice
State and Local Tax (SALT) Team Co-Chair Jennifer Karpchuk shares why she joined Holland & Knight and what she sought in a lateral move: a large platform and a collaborative culture. She notes the firm offers extensive opportunities to build relationships and work with attorneys across practice groups.
As an experienced lawyer in SALT matters, including corporate income, franchise, gross receipts, personal income, sales and use, business privilege and real estate taxes, Ms. Karpchuk has already strengthened our tax practice.
"We have so much opportunity at this firm to be able to grow it to a really great national SALT practice," she explained. "So that's what I'm really excited about."
Jennifer Karpchuk: I was looking for a firm that had a larger platform, but also had a lot of opportunity to expand the state and local tax group. So you know, Holland & Knight had both of those things. And then the third thing that was really important to me was an environment where, you know, I felt like people were, you know, happy, that they liked each other, that there was collegiality. And you know, it was nice when coming here to find that, you know, that wasn't all just smoke and mirrors, that it was true, and so it's been great.
I don't think that anyone can prepare you for the amount of attorneys that over 2,000 attorneys is. So I think just the sheer size, and my experience was two weeks after I joined was the all partners meeting. So I didn't even see the whole firm, but that was, you know, a lot of people all at once. But I think that the positive of that is there's so many relationships there, there's so many potential opportunities there. That it's just making sure that you're really, you know, getting out there, you're meeting people and you're engaging so that people know who you are within the firm, because obviously it is large. It is what you make of it, I think.
I love the Philadelphia office where I am located, but what's great is that I'm also working across many offices. The tax departments are in various offices throughout the firm, and then just because of the nature of my work, I'm not necessarily only working with tax practitioners. I'm working a lot of times with corporate attorneys or an employment attorney that has a client that has a state and local tax issue because they pop up pretty much for everyone. It's been great to sort of meet a lot of people, you know, through their needs for state and local tax help. We have so much opportunity at this firm to be able to grow it to a really great national SALT practice. So that's what I'm really excited about.