The Firm That Other Firms Call

Roberts & Holland LLP: Six Decades of Tax Law There are large law firms with tax departments, and then there is Roberts & Holland LLP — a New York firm that has spent more than sixty years doing tax law and essentially nothing else. The firm describes itself as the largest law firm in the United States engaged primarily in the practice of tax law, and its own summary of what it does is refreshingly narrow: sophisticated planning, compliance, and controversy work. Its tagline, "Providing Innovative Solutions to Today's Tax Challenges," is less a slogan than a job description. The firm was founded by Sidney I. Roberts and William C. Warren, who built their reputations in real estate and corporate taxation and went on to author a foundational treatise on the U.S. taxation of foreign corporations. That combination — deep domestic transactional tax work paired with serious cross-border scholarship — still describes the firm's center of gravity today. Roberts & Holland operates from a single office at 1675 Broadway in Manhattan. Thirty Lawyers, Deliberately Roughly thirty lawyers practice at Roberts & Holland. In an era of thousand-attorney platforms, that number is a strategy rather than a limitation. The firm's stated value proposition is that it draws on "a team of lawyers with a broad range of in-depth experience" to develop practical solutions to complex business and financial problems — and that it does so on a timely, cost-effective basis. The phrasing rewards a second look, because "broad range" and "in-depth" usually pull against each other. At most firms, breadth comes from adding practice groups and depth comes from specialization within them, and the two rarely meet on the same matter. At a thirty-lawyer tax boutique, the breadth is "across tax disciplines" and the depth is "within tax law itself". A single deal can pick up a real estate partner who has spent a career on Section 1031 exchanges, an international partner fluent in treaty analysis, and a state and local partner who knows how New York City will treat the same transaction the IRS just blessed — and all three are in the same building, on the same file, without the coordination overhead of a large-firm matter. The firm works closely with clients to understand the actual details of a transaction, aiming to optimize the tax outcome while still meeting the underlying business objective. It frequently serves as special tax counsel on complex deals — brought in by companies, by accounting firms, and by other law firms that need a level of tax specialization their own benches don't carry. That referral posture is telling: Roberts & Holland is the firm other firms call. The Practice Areas "Real estate taxation" may be the firm's most visible strength. Roberts & Holland represents major investors, developers, and REITs across commercial real estate — from closely held developers and famil