Kutak Rock LLP has elected 17 new partners from its attorney ranks in seven of the firm’s 19 offices—Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Omaha, Scottsdale, Spokane and Washington, D.C. The promotions became effective on January 1, 2024.
“In each of our new partners we see talent and dedication combined with a demonstrated commitment to unmatched client service,” said John Petr, Chair of Kutak Rock. “These attorneys bring diverse experiences, perspectives and industry knowledge and we look forward to their continuing contributions to the growth and success of Kutak Rock. We are excited to welcome them to the partnership.”
Over half of Kutak Rock’s new partner class identifies as diverse, and a quarter identifies as races and ethnicities other than white/Caucasian.
The attorneys elected to the partnership are:
Leland P. Abide (Minneapolis) represents clients in high-stakes litigation across the United States, with an emphasis on representing entrepreneurs, family owned, and mid-sized corporations. His practice spans everything from large intellectual property matters to fiduciary duty and ERISA litigation, and business tort claims. In addition to his litigation practice, Leland acts as an advisor to clients on general corporate matters and has significant experience drafting and negotiating a variety of commercial contracts.
Tomi E. Ajibodu (Omaha) practices in the firm’s Public Finance Department and Secondary Markets Working Group. She represents clients in various types of public finance transactions, including securitizations, asset-backed structured financings, synthetic tax-exempt securities, derivatives, municipal securities, general securities and corporate law matters. She has advised financial institutions and banking clients with respect to Dodd-Frank regulatory matters, including the Volcker Rule and broker-dealer registration. She has also advised clients on Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulations, including introducing broker, commodity pool operator and commodity trading advisor registrations.
Reshma A. Amin (Scottsdale) represents commercial lenders and commercial developers in multi-jurisdictional real estate and financing transactions, including transactions involving multifamily projects, retail centers, medical office buildings, hotels, and general business assets. Her real estate practice includes matters related to acquisitions, dispositions, leasing, property management, and construction. Her commercial lending practice includes drafting and negotiating loan documents, conducting due diligence, and title and survey reviews. Reshma has also represented various institutional lenders in documenting commercial loans involving fee-owned real estate, tribal land, ground leases, and non-real estate assets.
Nicholas A. Carson (Washington, D.C.) focuses his practice on community development and tax-advantaged investing in renewable energy investment tax credits (ITC) and production tax credits (PTC), historic tax credits (HTC), and new markets tax credits (NMTC). Nick represents corporations, financial institutions, and syndicators in tax credit equity investments and purchase transactions, as well as lenders in providing financing to tax credit projects.
Michelle M. Douglas (Omaha) has focused her practice on financial regulatory, compliance and litigation matters for more than 20 years. Most recently, she provided broad regulatory support to product, operational and compliance teams with a focus on higher risk areas, including domestic and international anti-money laundering and sanctions, money transmission and consumer protection.
Sarah E. Elsden (Spokane) focuses her practice on complex commercial litigation and intellectual property litigation and counseling in connection with a wide range of industries, including software services, consumer products, and financial services. She represents both plaintiffs and defendants in an extensive variety of matters, including commercial and employment disputes, and has significant experience in all phases of complex commercial litigation. She routinely advises businesses facing contract disputes, consumer protection, noncompete covenants, fraud, trade secret and unfair competition, and copyright and trademark infringement issues.
Pardis O. Farrokhyar (Denver) focuses her practice on representing issuers and underwriters in tax-exempt and taxable financings for municipalities, school districts, and particularly utility-related issuers (including water and wastewater) and transportation-related issuers (including ports and airports).
Jon D. Finch (Scottsdale) focuses his practice on public finance and serves clients in taxable and tax-exempt financings throughout the country. He serves as bond counsel, lender’s counsel, developer’s counsel and issuer’s counsel in a variety of complex public finance transactions.
Edward “Ted” J. Gillespie (Atlanta) focuses his practice on New Markets Tax Credit transactions, along with projects involving all aspects of traditional real estate financing and acquisition. Ted’s work also includes traditional real estate transactions, spanning areas from negotiating and financing transactions to forming ownership entities and securing economic incentives. He also has experience working with zoning and government compliance issues.
Jay C. Jackson (Omaha) serves as counsel to municipal issuers, underwriters and lenders, all in connection with the issuance of municipal bonds and other obligations. In such capacities he focuses on financing affordable multifamily housing. In addition, Jay acts as special counsel to lenders for the acquisition and documentation of interest rate caps in multifamily housing transactions. Prior to assuming these roles, Jay served on active duty in the United States Air Force for 14 years, earning a Master of Laws in international law and deploying to the Middle East six times. He continues to serve as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
Philip A. Overcash (Scottsdale) is a seasoned litigator with more than 20 years of complex civil, commercial and real estate litigation experience. He has successfully represented a wide array of clients in legal disputes involving contracts, real estate, construction defects, insurance coverage and bad faith, employment law, trademarks and trade secrets, and appeals.
Patricia E. Riley (Omaha) primarily represents clients in connection with financing transactions, secured lending, sales and acquisitions and related real estate matters for a variety of businesses, including franchised restaurants, national and regional restaurant brands, and retail fitness. She assists in all aspects of the transactions and helps facilitate such transactions through contacts with franchisors, landlords, vendors, borrowers and lenders.
Alison R. Seaborne (Omaha) primarily focuses her practice on commercial real estate, development, acquisitions, dispositions, and commercial leasing transactions. Alison also represents equity investors and syndicators in transactions involving the low-income housing tax credit program. She has additional experience representing commercial lenders and real estate investors for a variety of transactions and conducting the due diligence and title and survey reviews; asset management divisions of large institutional clients on various matters, including real estate diligence review; and commercial landlords in the negotiation of commercial leases and lease amendments.
Kathy A. Steadman (Scottsdale) primarily practices in the areas of employee benefits, public pension, insurance and other regulatory matters. She routinely represents and counsels clients in their dealings with Arizona regulatory agencies, including the Arizona Department of Insurance, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System and the Arizona Department of Health Services. She counsels clients in connection with compliance matters under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), ground ambulance transport and certificate of necessity matters, The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), and related state and federal laws.
John J. Westerhaus (Omaha) advises plan sponsors and fiduciaries regarding the design, implementation, administration, and operation of employee benefit plans in order to minimize client risk and maximize client value. This includes developing a range of practical solutions to complex compliance problems and translating the associated legal issues into discrete decision points. John works with welfare and retirement plans in a variety of industries, with particular emphasis on advising Taft-Hartley (multiemployer) and governmental plans. This practice includes resolving benefit determination and appeal issues, drafting plan documents, policies and amendments, reviewing and negotiating service provider and investment agreements, and presenting or training on fiduciary and compliance topics. John has also represented employee benefit plans in litigation or other adversarial proceedings, both as plaintiffs and as defendants.
Colton T. Williams (Omaha) focuses his practice on community development and tax incentive finance products including federal new markets tax credits, state new markets tax credits, historic rehabilitation credits and other related state and federal financing products. Colton has experience representing developers, investors and lenders in a variety of tax credit transactions, with a specific focus on New Markets Tax Credit financing. His practice includes structuring and closing transactions and tax credit unwinds, negotiating real estate and finance documents, and representing clients across a variety of transaction structures.
Isaiah Wilson II (Scottsdale) advises emerging and middle market companies on securities compliance, equity and asset purchase and sales, venture capital funding and corporate governance. In addition, he advises industrial investor clients concerning their alternative investments and provides general corporate counsel regarding equipment purchases, sponsorship agreements, consulting agreements and other general commercial transactions.