Phone:
(206) 221-1535
Email: mhat@uw.edu
B.A. 1991, Texas A&M University M.A. 1993, Texas A&M University J.D. 1996, New York University School of Law
Taxation
See the full list under the Publications tab below.
Michael Hatfield is the Dean Emeritus Roland L. Hjorth Professor of Law. His research is centered on issues of technology and taxation and the professional responsibility of tax lawyers. He has written on legal ethics more generally, taxation, trusts and estates, and law and religion. His articles have been published in the Florida Tax Review, the Arizona State Law Journal, the Indiana Law Journal, the Florida State University Law Review, the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, Tax Notes, the Northwestern Law Review Colloquy, the NYU Annual Survey of American Law, the Journal of Law and Religion, the Lewis and Clark Law Review, the Baylor Law Review, the South Central Review (Modern Languages Association), and elsewhere. He contributed to the anthology On Torture (Johns Hopkins University Press) and wrote the E-Langdell E-casebook on tax lawyer ethics. In 2017, he was awarded the UW Law Faculty Scholarship Award for Excellence in Law Review Articles.
He is admitted to the bar in New York, where he was an associate in two New York City law firms: Debevoise & Plimpton and Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett. At Debevoise & Plimpton he was an associate in the tax department primarily concerned with the taxation of international private equity funds, and at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett he was an associate in the estate planning department. He also is admitted to the bar in Texas, where he was Board Certified in Estate Planning and Probate by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He was a shareholder in Schoenbaum, Curphy & Scanlan, P.C., in San Antonio, Texas where his practice was devoted to taxation and estate planning. Prior to joining the University of Washington, he was the Glenn D. West Research Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research at Texas Tech University School of Law.
Overall, Tax in Law Schools is an important contribution to scholarship on legal education and the teaching of tax law. Teachers of tax should attend to Hatfield’s prescriptions for increasing enrollment in tax courses. Moreover, law school faculty, as well as leaders across higher education, may find Hatfield’s article meaningful as they steer professional schools through the current moment and beyond.
Law-review articles by such experts as the University of Washington's Michael Hatfield lay out the problems to the public. Yet the IRS continues to ignore basic principles outlined by OMB directives and even its own internal-revenue manuals.
"A study by Michael Hatfield of the University of Washington argues that the IRS’s vast pool of data is highly vulnerable to ransomware attacks, Chinese government hacking, and other criminal activity."
