Morgan Lewis expands tax controversy & litigation team with Dillon and Breen

Morgan Lewis has expanded its tax controversy and litigation team with the additions of Sheri A. Dillon and Jennifer Breen as partners in the Washington, DC office.

Ms. Dillon joins from Vinson & Elkins, where she led the DC tax controversy and litigation team. Ms. Breen, who will officially start at the end of the month, joins from Mattel, Inc., where she was director of tax controversy.

Ms. Dillon’s market-leading practice focuses on federal tax controversy and tax-planning matters. She guides clients through IRS examination and appeals and the administrative claims process. In addition, she litigates tax cases in US Tax Court, US district and appellate courts, and the US Court of Federal Claims. On the tax-planning side, she advises on matters involving acquisitions, dispositions, combinations, and debt restructuring and reorganizations, with a special focus on partnership transactions and closely held businesses. Ms. Dillon’s diverse client list includes corporate taxpayers, partnerships, and partners in the financial services, private equity, real estate, energy, manufacturing, and consumer products industries as well as global, high-wealth individual taxpayers.

She is a regular speaker at the Tax Executives Institute, Federal Bar Association, ABA Section of Taxation, and the DC Bar Section of Taxation, among others. She also helped found the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, a program providing legal services to low income taxpayers, at the David A. Clarke School of Law.

Ms. Breen led Mattel’s ongoing federal, state, local, and international tax audits and controversies as director of tax controversy. Prior to joining Mattel, she spent eight years in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ national tax controversy practice and five years in the Office of the Chief Counsel at the IRS. In her career Ms. Breen has obtained more than 100 private letter rulings, technical advice memoranda, and formal IRS determinations.