BY KELLY CRESAP

In a legal career spanning over four decades, Dennis I. Meyer has become a leading practitioner in the field of international taxation. His entire career has been with one of the leading international law firms, Baker & McKenzie, where he has served as managing partner.
     Meyer earned his J.D. from Georgetown in 1960, then clerked for the chief judge of the U.S.Tax Court while pursuing an LL.M. in taxation from Georgetown, which he received in 1962. In April 2004, he will complete a two-year term as chairman of the Law Center’s Board of Visitors.As this and his many other recent contributions to the Law Center community attest, Meyer is no less passionately engaged in Georgetown Law now than he was during his student days.
     Meyer is originally from Dayton, Ohio, where he recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award from his undergraduate alma mater, the University of Dayton.After earning his law degrees at Georgetown, he joined the D.C. office of Baker & McKenzie in 1962.This proved fortuitous, for it placed him not only at the forefront of an emerging global law practice, but did so at a moment that remains a landmark in the history of U.S. international taxation. President John F. Kennedy’s precedent-setting tax reform was then making its way through Congress.That legislation transformed the way international trade would be conducted.“It was a total overhaul of the taxation regime for companies doing business abroad,” Meyer says.“It really set the stage for much of my practice over the next 40 years.” As the managing partner of Baker & McKenzie during the 1970s, Meyer directed the firm’s expansion in the Asia Pacific region, with new offices in China,Taiwan, and Thailand. One of Baker & McKenzie’s innovations has been to recruit lawyers in the countries where it opens offices, rather than to send U.S. lawyers abroad in revolving-door assignments.This has continued to enhance the firm’s cross-cultural effectiveness, allowing it to structure transactions from a multi-jurisdictional perspective.

Rising to opportunities such as these has been a hallmark of Meyer’s career. Having served for a period as managing partner worldwide for Baker & McKenzie, he more recently
has been managing partner of the firm’s North American offices. In August, he was nominated among the world’s 30 top transfer pricing lawyers by in-house counsel, corporate clients, and other tax professionals in an independent study by Euromoney Legal Group’s Best of the Best 2003 Expert Guide.      Even as he pursues his law practice at such a robust level, Meyer has continued to be a dynamic force in the Law Center’s development. In addition to chairing the Board of Visitors, he has continued to work with the Law Center’s Tax Institute and Leadership Council.Among his other contributions, he has endowed the Rita C. Murray Memorial Scholarship Fund, in honor of his mother-in-law. He spearheaded the Baker & McKenzie International Law Lecture, an annual series slated to begin in April.And he is wrapping up his service as a member of the Law Center Dean Search Committee – the first alumnus ever to serve in that capacity. In 1999, the Law Center conferred the Paul R. Dean Award on Meyer.
     For Meyer, the Law Center’s past achievements and its future potential provide him more than enough reason for such deep involvement.“We have one of the largest international law faculties in the country, if not the largest,” he observes.“And we offer over a hundred different courses in international law-related areas.” He speaks glowingly of the work of such faculty as Jim Feinerman, associate dean of International and Graduate Programs, Professor John Jackson, and Professor Charles Gustafson. Meyer also takes evident pleasure in noting that, when the Hotung International Law Building becomes operational in summer 2004, it will be “probably the premier international facility among law schools in the country.” Meyer’s legacy at Georgetown also continues in another way. Rita Peterson, one of his six children, is a 1993 graduate of the Law Center. Dennis Meyer and his wife make their home in Alexandria,Virginia.