by Donna
C. Gregory for Virginia Business December 2005
Before earning a law degree from the College of William & Mary,
Kate Marriott held the attention of hundreds of students
as a middle-school science teacher in Chesterfield
and Henrico counties.
Now, she’s capturing the attention of legal colleagues as well, as one
of Virginia’s top lawyers in the area of taxes, estates and trusts.
Marriott chairs Williams Mullen’s
employee benefits section where she helps companies
handle pension programs, employee stock ownership plans
and executive
compensation arrangements.
“We do everything from life insurance and health insurance to HIPAA and
401(k) plans,” she says. “All of that fits in my world. Everything
we do is generally tax-driven — how to get deductions, how to keep from
paying excise taxes, how to make sure things are reported properly.”
Before joining Williams Mullen in 2003, Marriott practiced at Hunton & Williams
for 17 years. She decided to become a lawyer in 1983 after the death of her
husband.
“I had a small child and I just decided I needed to make some changes in
my life and do more with it,” Marriott says. “It was a time of
introspection, and it made me think about my future a lot more. There are many
times I still
miss teaching. It was a great career, but I needed to have more of a challenge
and have something more interesting to do. It was the best decision I ever
made without a doubt.”
With the support of her family, Marriott left teaching to attend law school.
Now she is utilizing the talents she learned in the classroom to further her
law practice. “There’s a lot of overlap on the skills, because you
learn to listen to questions and then, you’re trying help answer and guide
and steer,” she says.
“It’s the problem solving that I find the most challenging. A lot
of times, people ask you questions where there are not clear answers. It’s
trying to get people to a place where they want to be without stepping into any
potholes. It’s actually very creative.”
Clients say Marriott’s straightforward manner makes it easy for them to
grasp the complexities of tax law and employee benefits. “Our HR professionals
are trying to interpret complicated plan provisions for our employees, and to
have someone who can speak it and write it in easy-to-understand terms is hugely
helpful,” says Holly Wenger, senior vice president and associate general
counsel for LandAmerica Financial Group Inc.
Recently, Marriott designed LandAmerica’s new employee stock purchase plan.
She regularly helps the company navigate the ins and outs of ERISA, the federal
law that sets minimum standards for pension and health-care plans. “ERISA
can be a very difficult subject matter, and she’s very fluent in the rules,” says
Wenger. “I like working with her, because she brings a common sense approach
to the rules.”
Brian Ball, chairman of Williams Mullen’s business section, credits Marriott’s
success to her “intellectual tenacity. She’s able to take highly
complex issues and boil them down in a way that clients can understand, so they
know what their options are,” he says. “If she’s working on
an issue for a client, she’s the one who wakes up at 4 a.m. in the morning
thinking about how to fix that situation.”
In addition to helping paying clients, Marriott offers legal advice on a pro-bono
basis to the Richmond Public Library Founda-tion and a nonprofit health-care
center in Richmond.
“Those are the kinds of things that really allow you to take your skills
as a lawyer and help clients who really can’t afford to pay for them,” says
Marriott. “It has allowed me to meet different kinds of people. You get
to see [their challenges] from the front line instead of from the ivory tower.”
