Eric Allen Kauk is the founder and managing member of Catholic Benefits Law, a law firm devoted entirely to the employee benefit plans of the Catholic Church. He advises archdioceses, dioceses, religious institutes, sponsored ministries, and Catholic schools and colleges on church plans and on the benefits provided to lay employees and to clergy, both active and retired.
The path to that practice is the reason it works. He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting magna cum laude and a master’s degree in accounting summa cum laude from Saint Leo University, then spent more than a decade as president of an employee benefits firm serving Catholic institutions, responsible for the plans themselves rather than for the opinions written about them. He managed renewals, negotiated with carriers, built reinsurance and captive arrangements, and ran requests for proposals from the inside. He went to law school while running that company, and during his third year at Stetson University College of Law he published a full church plan article in the Rutgers Law Record analyzing the bifurcated church plan election. He then completed an LL.M. in Taxation at Georgetown University Law Center, widely regarded as the leading graduate tax program in the country, where the Internal Revenue Code is taught the way the government reads it. He is admitted to The Florida Bar, the United States Tax Court, and the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.