MSU Law grad's article in National Law Review

Katila Howard, a recent graduate of Michigan State University College of Law, recently had her article "Marriage Penalty: Matrimony, Tax & Inequality" published in the prestigious National Law Review.

"I was surprised," she says. "Being published is such an honor and I'm very thankful."

Currently working as a law clerk for the Lansing office of Foster, Swift, Collins, & Smith P.C., and awaiting the results of the bar exam, Howard said her career goal is to focus on taxation, employee benefits, exempt organizations, and executive compensation. She is back on familiar turf, having previously worked for the firm as a summer associate during her 2L summer.

Howard earned her undergrad degree, with honors, in political science and women's studies, from the University of Michigan, and remained a Wolverine to earn her Master of Education degree.

She then worked as a Teach for America elementary school teacher in her native Detroit.

"I truly enjoyed working with students and being involved in the community," she says. "University Preparatory Academy-Ellen Thompson is an awesome school with great staff and administration."

Howard had always dreamed of becoming an attorney, and was accepted to law school prior to joining Teach for America-Detroit.

During her first summer, she clerked for The Miller Firm, a business litigation firm in Rochester; and was a judicial extern for the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan.

Simultaneously, she worked as a research assistant on MSU Law's project 60/50 commemorating the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and the 50th anniversary of the passage and signing into law of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

She also interned for the Michigan House of Representatives in Lansing.

Her externships included the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit last year, and the five months in early 2016 at the Michigan Tax Tribunal, where the work included drafting court orders, motions and calculating property values based on the State of Michigan Tax Code, analyzing valuation appeals and gathering information for Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Referees.

As Executive Editor for the Journal of Business and Securities Law, she enjoyed working alongside other similarly motivated individuals.

Howard even got a taste of political life, spending five months in 2014 working for Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic member of the Michigan House of Representatives, representing the 6th District in southwest Detroit, and the first Muslim-American woman to serve in the Michigan Legislature.

In her spare time, the Novi resident mentors students and works with animals.

- By Sheila Pursglove, Legal News

Published: Fri, Oct 07, 2016

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