Karen Smith Bryan retired from the partnership in December 2008. She practiced with the firm starting in 1979. Ms. Bryan focused primarily on corporate and general income taxation, with emphasis on mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, reorganizations of business entities and consolidated groups, debt and equity restructurings and financings, IRS audits, appeals and tax controversies. She handled a wide variety of tax disputes and has also coordinated responses to major multi-party IRS discovery initiatives.
Since the early 1980's, Ms. Bryan structured hundreds of leveraged buyouts and strategic business acquisitions. She represented investment bankers and broker-dealers, investment and buy-out partnerships, equity and real estate funds, private and publicly held retail and service conglomerates, high technology and computer service companies, closely held "C" and "S" corporations operating sports franchises, television production and syndication businesses, film and entertainment companies, various service-oriented ventures, and individual shareholders, creditors, owners and investors.
Ms. Bryan served on the Planning Committee of the USC Tax Institute, was a member of the American Bar Association's Corporate Tax Committee and its Individual Income Tax Committee, and is a past member of the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association Taxation Section. She was named by Chambers & Partners in each edition of its "Client's Guide to America's Leading Lawyers for Business," and has been a featured speaker before professional and industry groups, as well as a guest lecturer on the taxation of mergers and acquisitions at Boalt Law School. Prior to attending law school, Ms. Bryan studied physiological psychology, neuroanatomy and comparative psychobiology at U.C.L.A., where she completed courses for a Ph.D. in those disciplines in 1976.