Professor Abrams is the William K. Jacobs, Jr., Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, a position he has held since the fall of 2017. He graduated from the University of California at Irvine in 1976, and after a year of graduate study in mathematical physics he attended Harvard Law School. Following law school, Professor Abrams clerked for Chief Judge Theodore Tannenwald, Jr., of the United States Tax Court. He was Warren Distinguished Professor and Director of Tax Programs at the University of San Diego School of Law from 2014 through 2017, and he taught at Emory Law School from 1983 until 2014, was the William K. Jacobs, Jr., Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in 2013-14, and was the Maurice R. Greenberg Visiting Professor at Yale Law School in 2009. He has also taught as a visiting professor at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) and Cornell Law Schools and has taught at the International Tax Center at Leiden in the Netherlands and at the Technical University in Dresden, Germany. Professor Abrams practiced in Los Angeles with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison and in Washington, DC, with Steptoe & Johnson as well as with the National Office of Deloitte Tax.
Professor Abrams is the author or co-author of six books: Partnership Options, Disregarded Entities, Federal Income Taxation of Corporations and Partnerships, Federal Corporate Taxation, Essentials of U.S. Taxation, and Federal Income Taxation of Partnerships and Other Pass-Thru Entities. His articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Tax Law Review, the Virginia Tax Law Review, Tax Notes, and other periodicals. Professor Abrams has on four occasions been recognized for excellence in teaching and is on the Academic Advisory Board of the Tannenwald Foundation, a charitable organization formed to honor the memory of Theodore Tannenwald, Jr., late Chief Judge of the United States Tax Court, by recognizing outstanding tax scholarship written by law students. Professor Abrams has been a member of the Bloomberg/BNA Tax Management Real Estate Advisory Board as well as an Editorial Advisor to the Tax Advisor magazine.