Arkansas Business

Jennifer Pierce

Blame it on the auditors. Jennifer Pierce planned to be a tax accountant until she took an audit course during her senior year of college and learned that a public accounting career would probably require a couple of years grinding out audits.
She took her interest in taxes to law school instead.
Originally from Saratoga, on the Hempstead-Howard county line, Pierce graduated from Southern Arkansas University at Magnolia and then earned her JD from the Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a master's in tax law from New York University.
She was licensed as an attorney in 2001 and went directly to Mitchell Williams, where she does almost anything except litigation.
"I could have a mom-and-pop business; I could have a little old lady client. I have nonprofits as clients. I have really large businesses that are clients," she said.
Last year she and her partners accomplished an exceptionally complicated deal in which Education America, the parent company of for-profit Remington College, was sold and converted to a nonprofit.
Pierce is in her seventh year with the Junior League of Little Rock and serves on the board of Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families and Just Communities of Arkansas.