Two Birmingham Attorneys Named to The International Who’s Who of Corporate Tax Lawyers

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (July 27, 2009) – Attorneys Bruce P. Ely and Robert C. Walthall, partners in the Tax Practice Group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, are among only 561 lawyers from around the world who were selected for inclusion in The International Who’s Who of Corporate Tax Lawyers for 2009. Ely and Walthall are the only two lawyers from the state of Alabama selected for this recognition.

Since 1996 Who's Who Legal has identified the foremost legal practitioners in 31 areas of business law. The directory features over 10,000 of the world’s leading private practice lawyers in over 100. It is impossible to buy entry into this publication.

While serving as Chairman of the Bradley Arant Boult Cummings’ State and Local Tax Practice Group, Bruce Ely’s practice has for many years been concentrated in three distinct yet related areas: state and local taxation; federal taxation; and economic development/tax incentives. He has represented clients on state and local tax matters before the United States Supreme Court as well as the Alabama appellate courts, circuit courts, and the Administrative Law Division of the Alabama Department of Revenue, while also representing federal tax clients before the U.S. Tax Court and the IRS Appeals Office. In his capacity as state tax and incentives adviser, he has served on the teams that successfully recruited Mercedes-Benz and several of its Tier I suppliers, and Hyundai and several of its Tier I suppliers, to the State of Alabama, along with numerous other new or expanding industries. He recently served as chief counsel to Governor Riley’s Commission on Existing Industries.

Ely is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel, has been listed for many years in The Best Lawyers in America, Top 50 Lawyers in Alabama, and Who's Who in American Law, and is a member of the BNA Multistate Tax Advisory Board. He holds an LL.M. in Taxation from New York University, a law degree from the University of Alabama School of Law, and a B.S. in Accounting from the University of Alabama.

Robert Walthall has been a tax author for the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA), Washington, D.C., for the past thirteen years and is a columnist for the Journal of Passthrough Entities published by CCH, Chicago, Illinois. BNA is one of the nation's largest publishers of business, economic and tax related topics. He also contributed "State and Local Tax Incentives" to a recent supplement of the U.S. Taxation Guide to the "International Tax Review."

Walthall holds an LL.M. in taxation from New York University, a law degree from the University of Alabama School of Law and a B.S. in Accounting from the University of Alabama. In addition, he is a Trustee of the Southern Federal Tax Institute, Atlanta, Georgia, Chairman of the American Institute of Federal Taxation and past Editor-in-Chief of the Alabama Law Review. He is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America in both the Corporate and Tax law categories.