Butzel Long senior attorney Mark W. Jane elected President of the Washtenaw County Bar Association

DETROIT, Mich. –  Butzel Long senior attorney Mark W. Jane will officially swear in as President of the Washtenaw County Bar Association (the “WCBA”) on Thursday, April 11, 2019 during the Annual Meeting at the Ann Arbor City Club. His term as President will begin on July 1, 2019.

He has been actively involved with the WCBA for over a decade. He has served on the Board of Directors of the WCBA since 2008, currently serving as its President-Elect. Jane also previously served as a Co-Chair of the New Lawyers Section of the Washtenaw County Bar Association, to which he received the 2010 Outstanding Young Lawyer Award in recognition for his service. His other roles with the WCBA have included serving as a two-term Co-Chair of the Judiciary Committee, a Co-Chair Community Liaison Committee, and as a Director-at-Large.

Based in Butzel Long’s Ann Arbor office. Jane practices in the areas of employee benefits and executive compensation, with a focus on complex issues arising from the sponsorship of group health and welfare plans.

He has worked with employers of all shapes and sizes, providing incisive counsel regarding the tax and employment implications on the design and ongoing maintenance of a wide array of employee benefit plans, including comprehensive health and welfare plans, cafeteria plans, defined benefit plans, 401(k) and 403(b) defined contribution plans, 457(b) tax-exempt plans, non-qualified deferred compensation plans for executives, severance plans, and multi-employer fringe benefit plans. He has experience representing clients with respect to their benefit plans before various governmental agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Jane has represented employers and administrators regarding their benefit plans across a broad spectrum of industries, including automotive, retail, manufacturing, health care, municipal, tribal, and non-profit. He assists such clients with a multitude of general employee benefit matters, including:

• Drafting and reviewing required plan documents, notices, and summaries;
• Providing consultation regarding fiduciary duties inherent in managing ERISA-governed plans or plans subject to state fiduciary or third-party administration law;
• Walking welfare plan administrators through various HIPAA portability, COBRA, and ACA dilemmas in order to find workable solutions, for example:

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• HIPAA portability: preparing special enrollment notices and instructing plan administrators on rules for proper notice distribution;
• COBRA: consulting with small businesses over group health plan continuation coverage responsibilities and potential exemptions; and
• ACA: advising large employers on proper methods of counting full-time employees to assess employer shared responsibility compliance;
• Correcting plan errors for tax and fiduciary compliance; and
• Analyzing service provider contracts.

He also is a frequent participant with the State Bar of Michigan. He was a long-time member of the State Bar of Michigan Young Lawyers Section Council (including serving as Chair during the 2015-2016 bar year) and also served a three-year term on the State Bar of Michigan Board of Commissioners from 2014-2017. He currently serves on the State Bar of Michigan Social Media and Website Committee and as a representative of Washtenaw County (22nd Circuit) on the State Bar of Michigan Representative Assembly.

Jane attended Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where he earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.), cum laude. He also attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree with high distinction. Jane has been named an “Associate to Watch” by Chambers USA from 2016-2018, as one of the DBusiness Top Lawyers in Michigan for 2019, and as a “Rising Star” by Michigan Super Lawyers for the years 2009-2013 and 2015-2018.