John Marshall Law School student Jason Faust is spending his summer in Washington, D.C., as the 2011 Sweetnam Scholar at the Office of Benefits Tax Counsel with the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
“Earning the opportunity to intern at the Department of Treasury is, without a doubt, the pinnacle of my law school career,” said Faust, a joint JD/LLM student in the Employee Benefits Program. He has been working with Treasury staffers on initiatives being undertaken jointly by the Departments of Treasury and Labor and the Internal Revenue Service, including an examination of the 1986 changes to the tax code and public comments relating to the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Associate Dean Kathryn Kennedy, who also directs the Center for Tax Law and Employee Benefits, selected Faust as the recipient of the William F. Sweetnam Jr. Scholarship which includes the externship appointment and a $5,000 award to help underwrite his travel and living expenses. The scholarship was established by Sweetnam, the retired Benefits Tax Counsel at Treasury who serves as a member of the Center for Tax Law and Employee Benefits Advisory Board.
“Without this scholarship, I would not have had the opportunity to build the network I have with the John Marshall alumni in Washington, as well as with other individuals within the government. I would not have been able to take advantage of the invaluable experience that I am gaining while working at Treasury,” Faust explained.
Faust, who entered law school as an evening division student after working for several years, said he chose the niche area of employee benefits because “I wanted to work in a challenging area of law that so substantially affects a majority of people’s lives…yet so few people actually learn the rules.”
He will receive the JD degree in January 2012 and the LLM in Employee Benefits in May 2012. While at John Marshall, Faust was a member of The John Marshall Law Review and the Moot Court Honors Council in the 2010-2011 academic year, and is a member of Phi Delta Phi. He worked at the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Clinic in 2011 and was the evening student representative to the Student Bar Association in 2009. He completed a judicial externship with Judge Diane Joan Larsen in the Circuit Court of Cook County in 2010.
A resident of Oak Lawn, Ill., Faust received a bachelor of arts degree in Broadcast and Electronic Communications from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis., in May 2005.