ANDREA S. KRAMER is the founding member of ASKramer Law LLC, a boutique law firm in Chicago. A member of the Illinois Bar, she provides legal counsel to public and private companies, family offices, and private clients. Previously, she was a partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP, and at Ungaretti & Harris LLP where she began her career. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (B.A., history and political science, summa cum laude) and of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law (J.D., cum laude); later, serving as an adjunct professor at Northwestern for two decades.
Ms. Kramer manages a sophisticated, unique, and multi-disciplinary legal practice, which falls roughly into five broad areas: taxation and regulation of financial products, derivatives, digital assets, and nonfungible tokens (NFTs); trading operations with respect to securities, commodities, derivatives, and digital assets; taxation of energy production and transmission; corporate governance; and tax controversy.
Ms. Kramer is a leading commentator on financial products, derivatives, and digital assets, frequently contributing to trade and professional journals. She has written more than 200 articles and publications on derivatives, digital assets, operational and reputational risk in trading operations, and SEC and CFTC compliance issues. The National Law Review recognized Ms. Kramer as a “Go To Thought Leader” in 2022 (Crypto/Blockchain), and in 2020 (Financial Law [Virtual Currencies]); and JD Supra readers voted her a “Top Author” in cryptocurrency taxation in 2021 (Readers’ Choice Awards).
A frequent speaker at conferences and workshops, Ms. Kramer has presented more than 400 speeches and full-day workshops on derivative financial products and digital assets. She has developed and conducts full-day training courses on the documentation and negotiation of swap transactions and over-the-counter derivatives, financial products, foreign currency, and digital assets. She has conducted educational courses for the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), including workshops and training for their financial product specialists on a wide range of tax issues for more than 20 years.
Ms. Kramer is the author of the first three editions of Financial Products: Taxation, Regulation, and Design, published by Wolters Kluwer, and is co-author of the fourth edition with Nicholas C. Mowbray. As co-editor-in-chief of CCH’s Journal of Taxation of Financial Products for its first six years of publication, Ms. Kramer solicited, edited, and wrote articles for each issue. She was co-editor and a contributing author of Energy and Environmental Trading: U.S. Law and Taxation (Cameron May, July 2008) and co-editor and a contributing author of Energy and Environmental Project Finance Law and Taxation: New Investment Techniques (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Ms. Kramer has lobbied the U.S. Congress and worked with the Treasury and the IRS to address the taxation of financial products, hedging transactions, the purchase and sale of derivatives, mark-to-market rules, and notional principal contracts. She testified before the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee on “Tax Reform and the Tax Treatment of Financial Products.”
Ms. Kramer was recognized by the National Law Journal as one of the 50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America because of her “demonstrated power to change the legal landscape, shape public affairs, launch industries and do big things.” Chambers USA notes her “expert opinions on the taxation of financial products”; her “expertise in the treatment of financial instruments and derivatives”; her “very acute mind when it comes to securities and financial instruments taxation”; and “her considerable expertise in energy matters, including the field of renewable energy sources.” The Legal 500 named Ms. Kramer to its Inaugural Hall of Fame for six consecutive years as a leading lawyer, recognizing her as a person who “takes a deep and active interest in tax policy development” and as “one of our nation’s most important voices in financial market tax policy.”
Ms. Kramer is also well-known for her long-standing commitment to dismantling workplace gender discrimination. She served as a member of the Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Board for the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, and she has garnered numerous professional awards for her related writing, speaking, and mentoring efforts over the past 35 years. She is the co-author of three related books: It’s Not You, It’s the Workplace: Women’s Conflict at Work and the Bias that Built It (Nicholas Brealey, 2019); Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work (Second Edition, Nicholas Brealey, 2020); and Beyond Bias: the PATH to Ending Gender Inequality at Work (Nicholas Brealey, 2023).
