Jack Bogdanski, Behind the Teacher

Professor Jack Bogdanski, director of LC Law’s tax program, is a busy person. As the Douglas K. Newell Faculty Scholar, he produces copious amounts of scholarly writing every year, including regular columns for the national journals Estate Planning and Corporate Taxation.  He also maintains his treatise Federal Tax Valuation, which has been cited many times by the federal courts, and he is working with a co-author on a new edition of another major tax treatise, due to be published in 2015.

When he is not writing, Bogdanski supervises a volunteer law school workshop that renders free tax advice to dozens of international undergraduate students at Lewis & Clark College.  He also speaks frequently to professional groups on tax-related subjects.  His most recent talk, in Seattle, was podcast to accountants and business appraisers around the country.  Next on his speaking schedule are a national webinar on valuation, and his eighth annual one-man continuing education program, presented by the Oregon Law Institute, a program of LC Law.

Bogdanski says that his fall semester courses, Income Tax and Estate & Gift Tax, are the best part of his professional life these days.  “These classes are building blocks for great careers,” he says.  “I can think of quite a few of our graduates who are now practicing law in tax and related specialties.  They all got their start on tax in these classes.  Some of them are like me – they never thought they’d be interested in the subject until they started looking into it.  Tax law is not as dry or dull as most people might think it is.”

He credits his own law school tax professors – Wayne Barnett at Stanford, and Boris Bittker and Marvin Chirelstein at Yale – as turning his sights to tax.  “These people showed me how it’s done.  Every working day, I just try to emulate them, and pass on what I learned from them.  And we have impressive students.  It’s a blast working with them.”