South Texas College of Law

 

Born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley, Laura recently graduated from South Texas College of Law Houston. There she served as the President of the Hispanic Law Students Association and as Secretary of the Tax Law Society. Laura is passionate about serving, educating, and connecting with marginalized and underserved communities. While in law school she earned the pro bono certificate by volunteering over 50 hours of work in the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic and VITA. Laura will be continuing her legal education by pursuing an LL.M. in Taxation and plans on returning to Texas to continue to give back to her community.

 

Baylor Law School

Jared Miller is a J.D. candidate at Baylor Law School, where he focuses on tax, business planning, and estate planning. He received Baylor Law’s Outstanding Achievement in Tax Law Award and earned the “High A” in all of Baylor’s tax courses. Jared also received awards for Outstanding Achievement in Business Planning, Outstanding Achievement in Estate Planning, and Outstanding Contribution to Interscholastic Transactional Law. Before law school, Jared earned a Master of Science in Accounting and a Master of Arts in Business Administration, and he became a Certified Public Accountant in Texas. His tax career began during his graduate studies and continued at PwC in Dallas, where he focused on international tax for private equity clients. During law school, Jared built on that foundation through transactional coursework, legal scholarship published in the Baylor Law Review, service as Executive Treasurer of the Business Law Society, and work as a summer associate. He will graduate from Baylor Law with Special Distinctions in both Business Planning and Estate Planning and Administration. Jared will begin his legal career in the Corporate and Business Transactions group of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP in Houston, where he hopes to build a practice focused on private transactions, business succession, and tax planning for clients in Texas.

South Texas College of Law

Harrison Punches was born in Guam because of his father's military service in the Air Force. After that, he moved throughout the country, eventually ending in San Antonio, Texas. At this stage, Harrison decided to join the Air Force reserves as a paralegal. During basic training, he received his acceptance letter from the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA) for a BBA in accounting. That study of accounting led him to pursue a career in tax. During his tenure at UTSA, Harrison concurrently served at Lackland-AFB during the summer. Harrison eventually graduated Cum Laude from UTSA and was accepted to STCL as a full-time student where he volunteered in the VITA program, preparing federal income tax returns for low and moderate income tax payers and was the managing editor of the Construction Law Journal. This fall, Harrison will pursue an LLM at NYU.