Professor Leandra Lederman is the William W. Oliver Professor of Tax Law and Director of the Tax Program at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where she teaches Federal Income Tax, Corporate Tax, Tax Procedure, and Tax Policy Colloquium. She spent Fall 2015 as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
Professor Lederman joined the Maurer Law School faculty in 2004 as the Visiting William W. Oliver Professor of Tax Law; she assumed her current position in 2005. Before that, she had been a member of the faculty of George Mason University School of Law since 1997. She also spent the 2002-2003 academic year at the University of Texas School of Law as a visiting professor. From 1994 to 1997, she was a faculty member at Mercer University's Walter F. George School of Law. Every fall since 2011, Professor Lederman has taught a short course in U.S. Tax Law at the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain.
In 2001, Professor Lederman was recognized by George Mason University for excellence in teaching. In 2005, she received the Law Alumni Association Legal Teaching Award from New York University School of Law. In 2009, Professor Lederman received a Trustees' Teaching Award from Indiana University Maurer School of Law, and in 2012, she received the Leon H. Wallace Teaching Award from the Maurer Law School.
Professor Lederman is one of the most frequently cited tax scholars. She has written numerous articles on policy issues in the areas of federal income tax (individual and corporate), tax controversies, and tax administration (including a number of articles on tax compliance and evasion). Her work has included empirical analyses and a law-and-economics approach to tax issues. Professor Lederman is the co-author of the third edition of Understanding Corporate Taxation, with Michelle M. Kwon of Tennessee Law School. She is also co-author with Kansas Law School Dean Stephen W. Mazza of the Tax Controversies: Practice and Procedure casebook and Teacher's Manual (4th ed. 2018), as well as a Code, Regulations, and Other Materials volume, most recently in the 2013 edition.
Professor Lederman is admitted to the bars of the state of New York (inactive), the U.S. Tax Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a member of the Board of Advisers of the Florida Tax Review. She served as a National Reporter for the United States for the 2015 European Association of Tax Law Professors Congress on the topic of surcharges and penalties in tax law. She is a Vice-Chair of the Tax Policy & Simplification Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association, a past Chair of its Teaching Taxation Committee, and she served for many years as an Associate Editor of the Section's NewsQuarterly. Professor Lederman is also a past Chair of the Tax Section of the Association of American Law Schools and a past member of the Board of Directors of the National Tax Association.
Lederman received an A.B. degree cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1987, with honors in her major of Romance Languages (French and Spanish). She also studied Japanese. In 1990, she earned her J.D. cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she was a Note and Comment Editor of the N.Y.U. Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Professor Lederman subsequently earned her LL.M. in taxation from N.Y.U., where she was a student editor of the Tax Law Review. After practicing law as an associate at White & Case in New York City and receiving her LL.M., she clerked for Judge David Laro of the U.S. Tax Court in Washington, D.C. Professor Lederman speaks French and Spanish, has studied basic Italian, and is currently studying German.