Ian D. Lanoff

Ian D. Lanoff, who died in 2024 at age 82, had a long and prolific legal career and played an important role in establishing the administration of the then-new Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”). Ian was inducted in 2000 as a Charter Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel (the “College”).

Raised near Chicago’s North Side, Ian fell under the spell of Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs. In high school, he played baseball and wrote an eponymous column for the school paper, “The Lian’s Den.” He earned a B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI in 1964, a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1967, and an LL.M. from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC in 1969. He maintained his allegiance to the Cubs and Michigan Wolverines throughout his life.

Ian began as a labor attorney, representing, among others, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and serving as counsel to the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”). He then transitioned to benefits law becoming the general counsel of the United Mineworkers Health and Retirement Fund.

He helped draft the Pension Reform Act of 1973 (a bill that was a precursor to ERISA) as counsel for the U.S. Senate Labor Committee (now the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) and was one of the first administrators of the Department of Labor’s (“DOL’s”) Pension and Welfare Benefit Program (now DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (“EBSA”)) during the Carter and a bit of the Reagan administrations. With the DOL, Lanoff played a central role in the development of ERISA Title I principles that still animate ERISA law today, including the “everything being equal” test, the power-sharing agreement between the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) and the DOL (known as Reorganization Plan No. 4 of 1978), and the foundational regulation that requires fiduciaries to make prudent decisions, follow appropriate processes, and seek sound advice.

College Fellow Marc Machiz, former Associate Solicitor at the DOL, recalled the incredible challenges faced by Ian in 1978: “As the Administrator of Pension and Welfare Benefit Programs awkwardly placed in the agency accustomed to regulating unions, Ian operated without the line authority and respect routinely granted to a modern Assistant Secretary of EBSA. Ian’s enforcement office was staffed by personnel reassigned from other work, mostly criminal investigations of union officials. The Regional Directors responsible for enforcement were, none of them, primarily interested in benefit plans. As far as enforcement was concerned, Ian’s job was impossible. But Ian’s grasp of the situation was insightful and strategic. He focused the agency on a few significant cases, investigations which, if successful would merit a Wall Street Journal article, and insisted on periodic calls or meetings with each office head identifying a handful of these cases and providing progress reports on the big stuff. Ian was passionate in pursuit of the idea that his tiny, misfit subset of an agency needed an outsized public profile if the public was to take the new law seriously. Significant cases were how he got there. And he did it without real line authority, with the force of his unfailingly upbeat personality and relentless persistence.”

Ian went on to work for Wilkie Farr & Gallagher and Bredhoff & Kaiser in DC for periods in the 1980s and 1990s. From 1996 through 2023, Ian was a principal at Groom Law Group in DC, where his clients included Taft-Hartley plans, union plans, and public plans, he was the chief adviser to the board of some of the country’s larger governmental plans, and he participated on the boards of various public interest groups. In his later years, he served on the Board of Directors of the Pension Rights Center.

Ian’s personal and professional influence were profoundly felt by colleagues, clients, and other benefits professionals, including his contributions to the scholarship of ERISA at conferences and seminars. College Fellow Patricia (Trish) Winter noted his brilliance and that he was one of the rare individuals who enriched the lives of those around him, both professionally and personally.

Known for making positive contributions to the world, he mentored young people and made sure interns were “seen.” Marc Machiz noted that, on a personal level, “Ian was kind to me throughout my career. Astonishingly, he knew who I was when I was the agency’s youngest and least experienced litigator. It was an honor to know him and a privilege to help restore his vision of how DOL should go about enforcing ERISA.”

At a celebration of Ian’s life, Groom Law Group attorneys Michael Kreps and College Fellow Lou Mazawey cited Ian’s courage in the face of adversity, his integrity (willing to fire a union leader not watching out for funds), and his role in benefitting tens of millions of plan participants. Former NLRB officials noted Ian’s larger-than-life role in protecting workers, and a client described Ian as “the perfect lawyer,” a listener who would very clearly object to an improper business idea, but tirelessly overcome obstacles for a good idea. Many fondly recalled Ian’s good-natured personality and love of life, such as his joy at seeing another Michigan football championship in 2023 and his love of soft-serve ice cream and veal piccata.

The October 12, 2024, Congressional Record honored Ian. Congresswoman Virginia Foxx described Ian’s role at DOL, as the nation’s top ERISA administrator, in implementing and upholding principles inherent in ERISA and laying a solid foundation for the following decades, recognized his public service in the Senate, praised his service on the Board of Directors of the Pension Rights Center helping “individuals receive the pension benefits they have earned,” and observed that Ian’s “public service was matched by his recognition as a powerhouse in private practice for decades where he advised fiduciaries of both public and private pension plans.”

Photo Source: Groom Law Firm