Years of experience, working for you.
I have long wanted to build a law practice serving individuals, families, professionals, and entrepreneurs. I spent the first decade of my legal career working both in the courtroom and in the transactional world. This means I saw legal issues from both sides, which is unusual for a lawyer in today's specialized marketplace. I know how a transaction, estate plan, or business structure can go wrong because I've seen it happen time and again and have worked hard to resolve those disputes. And I also know how a client-centered approach, which takes the time to learn about a family or a business and to understand what it needs, can go a long way toward preventing disputes before they happen.
In the summer of 2016, I decided to strike out and develop the practice I had envisioned. I am proud to have spent eight years at the Charleston firm of Duffy & Young, LLC, but that firm has a different core competence--civil litigation and trial and appellate advocacy. I spent my time there litigating and trying many cases, but also preparing estate plans, setting up business organizations, advising companies and professional practices, and representing parties to business sales, capital investments, and loan transactions.
I recently served as President of the Charleston Tax Council, a group of tax lawyers working in the Charleston area.
In the Spring of 2019, I completed my LL.M. degree in Taxation from New York University, giving me an in-depth understanding of the many tax law issues which face individuals and businesses. My studies in the program were focused on tax issues which affect families and small businesses: income taxation of partnerships, S corporations, and LLCs, as well as transfer (that is, estate, gift, and generation-skipping) taxation.
I am admitted to practice law in both North and South Carolina. Before joining Duffy & Young, I spent two years at the Charlotte firm of Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, P.A., where I had the good fortune to spend several months in each of the firm's practice areas, as is its custom for first-year lawyers. During this exciting time with one of the Carolinas' largest firms, I gained my first experience planning both taxable and non-taxable estates, preparing and reviewing corporate and loan transaction documents, and advising clients on the legal issues surrounding investment partnerships, such as hedge funds, private equity funds, and venture capital funds.
I attended law school at the University of Virginia, from which I graduated in 2004 as a member of the Virginia Law Review. Upon graduation from law school, I clerked for one year for the Honorable Phyillis A. Kravitch, United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, Georgia.
My undergraduate degrees are in chemical engineering and political science from North Carolina State University, from which I graduated summa cum laude in 2001 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. This unique double-major program, which State encouraged through its Benjamin Franklin Scholars Program, is in many ways the foundation of my skills as a lawyer. The academic rigor and analytical skills of an engineering education are the perfect foundation for the applied problem-solving which is the heart of what I do each day, well-balanced by the understanding of our political and legal system which the study of politics provides.
I am a native of eastern North Carolina, from which my family and I moved to Raleigh in 1990. My wife, Tyler, is a Charleston native, and I moved to Charleston shortly before we were married in 2008. We live on James Island with our daughter.
--Seth Whitaker
