On February 25, Alexandra Hammock flew from Atlanta to Raleigh to deliver tax-related guest lectures to students in Prof. Nicholas Brown's ARE420 Agribusiness Tax and ARE106 Agribusiness Law courses.
Alexandra Hammock is an associate at James Bates Brannan Groover, LLP, in Atlanta, Georgia, where she focuses on tax and wealth planning, along with other practice areas such as corporate matters, real estate issues, and transactional law. Hammock's day-to-day work involves managing client issues related to estate tax planning, succession planning for closely held companies (including farms), and corporate organization.
Prior to joining James Bates Brannan Groover, LLP, Hammock attended the University of Georgia where she obtained a degree in political science with a minor in health policy and management. Hammock then earned a Juris Doctorate (JD) from the University of Georgia School of Law. After finishing her JD, Hammock went on to pass the Georgia Bar Exam before then enrolling at the University of Florida to obtain an LLM in Taxation. During this time, Hammock also passed the Florida Bar Exam, thereby becoming a double-barred attorney in less than a year after graduating with her JD (a rare and very difficult accomplishment, notwithstanding the simultaneous completion of her LLM program).
Using her vast educational background and extensive client experiences, Hammock was able to provide in-depth tax knowledge to the ARE420 Agribusiness Tax students at a very understandable level. In this lecture, Hammock focused on the definition of a gross estate, how the estate tax threshold plays a role in succession planning, and crucial decisions that her clients (many of whom are farmers) make in order to preserve the generational longevity of their farms. Students were exceptionally interested in her materials, asking frequent and insightful questions and staying for an extended period of time after the lecture to discuss tax and career interests with Alexandra.
In the ARE106 Agribusiness Law course, Alexandra lectured over a broad material concerning income taxes. Unlike in the ARE420 Agribusiness Tax course, students in the ARE106 Agribusiness Law course had no prior lectures on taxes at all. Despite this, Alexandra covered a significant amount of income tax definitions, providing many examples that the students easily comprehended. Throughout the lecture, student engagement remained very high and students stayed well into the evening asking Alexandra various questions about taxes.
Alexandra's efforts in preparing for these lectures, traveling to Raleigh, and thoroughly explaining these crucial topics to students is greatly appreciated by both Prof. Nicholas Brown and the students. She is welcome back any time.
