Carol A. Harrington is a partner in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, resident in the Firm's Chicago office, where she was head of the Firm's Private Client Practice Group from 2006-2017. She advises clients on a variety of matters, including estate, gift and generation-skipping tax issues, closely-held businesses and succession planning, family office structures and issues, private trust companies, private foundations, trust and estate administration, and contested trust and tax matters.
As a national authority on the federal generation-skipping tax, Carol has advised attorneys, tax professionals, executors, trustees and others nationwide on this issue. She is a co-author of a tax treatise, Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax (Harrington, Kwon & Zaritsky) and has published many articles on the federal generation-skipping tax. Carol is a frequent speaker for professional groups.
Carol was named as Chicago Trusts and Estates "Lawyer of the Year" for both 2010 and 2015 by Naifeh, Smith, The Best Lawyers in America. In 2011, Carol was named as one of the three most influential lawyers by The National Law Journal for trusts and estates. Carol has been ranked every year in the top-tier for wealth management by Chambers USA, and is one of 17 lawyers in the U.S. with a top tier ranking for 2017. She was named an Illinois Super Lawyer in the estate planning & probate area by Law & Politics.
Carol is the past chair of the Generation-Skipping Tax: Regulations and Legislation Committee for the American Bar Association's Real Property, Probate and Trust Law, former member of its governing body, and a co-supervisor of the Tax Regulations and Legislation Committees. Carol is a fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, currently serving on the Estate and Gift Tax Committee, where she was a member of its Board of Regents (from 1999-2005). Carol is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Heckerling (Miami) Institute of Estate Planning. Carol is a former trustee of the ACTEC Foundation.
Carol is a member of the American Bar Association, the Illinois State Bar Association, the Chicago Bar Association (past chair of Division I of the Trust Law Committee) and the Chicago Estate Planning Council.
Education:
J.D., University of Illinois College of Law (1977) magna cum laude
B.S., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1974) summa cum laude with University Honors (Bronze Table)
Bloomberg BNA Tax Management Portfolios:
850 T.M., Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax (co-author)