Alan Tawshunsky is one of the leading employee benefits attorneys in the country.  His experience includes a decade at prominent law firms in Washington, DC and 20 years of experience in senior positions at the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department. During that time, he supervised the employee benefits lawyers in the National Office of IRS Chief Counsel and played a leading role in the preparation of regulations and other IRS and Treasury guidance on all aspects of employee benefits law, as well as review of briefs and coordination with the Department of Labor and other federal agencies.  He has been a featured speaker at many prominent employee benefits organizations.

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Alan is a member of the Joint Committee on Employee Benefits of the American Bar Association and of the Advisory Committee for the Bloomberg Tax Compensation Planning Journal. 

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Jeff Cohen

Of Counsel

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Tel: 202-621-1781

jeff@tawshunsky.com

 

Jeff Cohen represents a diverse range of clients, with an emphasis on multiemployer pension plans, the fiduciary provisions of ERISA, and disputes with PBGC.   He has 40 years of experience as an ERISA lawyer. He is also a nationally recognized expert on employee benefits issues in bankruptcy.  Mr. Cohen is a skilled negotiator and has resolved billions of dollars of benefits liabilities. He brings the same intensity to bear on his clients’ behalf whether the matter involves billions of dollars or more modest amounts.

From 2005 through 2007, Mr. Cohen was Chief Counsel of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the federal agency that insures traditional, private pension plans. In that capacity, he directed the work of 50 attorneys and served as lead counsel for the agency in major bankruptcy proceedings and ERISA litigation. Before his appointment as Chief Counsel, he served for many years as Deputy General Counsel of PBGC.

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During his distinguished tenure at PBGC, he was lead counsel for the agency in the bankruptcy proceedings, and related district court and appellate litigation, in such high-profile cases as United Airlines, Delta Airlines, Northwest Airlines, US Airways, Enron, Kaiser Aluminum, Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel, Pan American World Airways, Trans World Airlines, and New Valley (Western Union). He also spearheaded PBGC’s defense of individual and class actions involving allegations of breach of fiduciary duty and claims for benefits.

In March 2006, The American Lawyer named him as a Dealmaker of the Year for 2005 for his work on behalf of PBGC in the United Airlines bankruptcy and other major bankruptcy cases, one of a very small number of government attorneys ever to be so honored. Mr. Cohen is a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel, and was co-chair of the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Employee Benefits Committee from 2007 through 2009.  He is an active member of the American Bar Association’s Section of Labor and Employment Law, Employee Benefits Committee. 

Mr. Cohen has been selected for inclusion in every edition of the Best Lawyers in America and DC Super Lawyers since 2010, and in 2017 was named by Super Lawyers as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in Washington DC.

He earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1980, where he was an editor of the American Criminal Law Review, and his Bachelor of Arts from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1977.   He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, New York, and Virginia, as well as the Supreme Court of the United States and numerous federal courts of appeals and district courts.