What If Your Freedom Was In The Hands Of The Public Defender?
As a former public defender, I’ve had the honor of standing up for the poor, the forgotten, and the damned. This is the very essence of being a zealous advocate. My colleagues in the public defender’s office are some of the best trial attorneys I know. They are skilled, energetic, courageous, and ambitious. They are guardians of liberty and defend their clients […]
Nuts & Bolts of Storytelling For Public Speakers: How to Raise the Stakes
Learning how to raise the stakes in a story is hugely important. The problem that storytellers encounter more often then any other when telling their stories is failing to show the audience that there were high stakes. When you find yourself going “Whoa…!” during a story, or when you find yourself moving to the edge of your seat anxious to hear […]
Nuts & Bolts of Storytelling For Public Speakers: How to Tell An Unforgettable Story
SIGNIFICANT DETAILS As you may have heard before, it’s better to be specific than general most of the time. Like, “the bright pink tulip in the window” is better than “a flower.” It’s said that great criminals and sociopaths are especially good at including specific details in their alibis, because specific details read as “authoritative” […]
Harnessing The Power of Fear in Public Speaking – Tips & Tricks For An Unforgettable Presentation: Part II
When you hear the words “professional speaker,” do they conjure up a particular image in your mind? What exactly does a professional speaker look and sound like? What are some of the traits that successful speakers have in common? Before we delve into this, let me take you back to 1997. That was the year […]
Harnessing The Power of Fear in Public Speaking – Tips & Tricks For An Unforgettable Presentation
Have you ever gone to a technical talk or presentation excited about the topic, only to be frustrated by the speaker’s technical jargon and stiff delivery? If you’re a tax professional, you’ve likely been to more of these presentations than you care to remember (perhaps even reluctantly if you had perilously waited until the eleventh […]
Don’t Get Cracked!
In the Emmy award-winning “Regular Show” episode Eggscelent, Mordecai had to eat a 12-egg omelet in under an hour to win a funny-looking trucker hat for his good friend Rigby. Lawyers often face their own eggscelent challenge, but the stakes are quite a bit higher. My colleague Larry A. Campagna, who is a partner at […]
Onward And Upward Towards Corporate Tax Reform
Is FATCA Doing More Harm Than Good?
Few American laws have been as controversial as FATCA. FATCA stands for Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, a law passed in 2010 to clamp down on the use of foreign bank accounts by U.S. taxpayers to hide money that is otherwise subject to taxation in the United States. FATCA is the U.S. government’s newest enforcement […]
Lessons Learned From The Recent Conviction of Swiss Banking Giant Credit Suisse
When European financial giant Credit Suisse AG pleaded guilty to assisting U.S. taxpayers evade federal income tax, there was a great deal of swagger at the Justice Department. Former Attorney General Eric Holder, in classic Clint Eastwood style, boldly proclaimed that “no financial institution. . .is above the law,” and that any other bank which […]