jac@groom.com
202-861-6329
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Jen Cromwell, who joined Groom in 2008, has six years of employee benefits experience, and is well-versed in the benefit provisions under the Internal Revenue Code and ERISA. 

Jen says she enjoys the variety and intellectual stimulation of benefits work:  “Every day there’s something different.  It’s quite complex, with frequently changing benefits and tax issues—much like a jigsaw puzzle, where you put the edges together without knowing what the center will ultimately look like.”

Jen is a member of the health and welfare practice group and works with clients on a wide-range of tax issues relating to health and welfare plans including the section 125 cafeteria plan rules and nondiscrimination testing for self-insured health expense reimbursement plans.  Additionally, Jen works with clients on compliance matters regarding federal mandates such as HIPAA and COBRA, as well as drafting plan documents.

She likens her work drafting and writing good, accessible health and welfare documents to her volunteer work, teaching English as a second language.

“In my teaching I’m taking a complex entity—the English language—and making it understandable and useable,” says Jen.  “One of the challenges of employee benefits work, similarly, is communicating complex issues in a document so that they make sense to participants and participants can make use of it."

Further, her current pro bono work as a Montgomery County, Md., mediator informs her work at the Groom Law Group.

“My training and work in mediation helps me look at benefits problems in a neutral way, from both sides,” Jen says.

Jen has worked with plan sponsors, multiemployer plans, insurers, and other service providers.  Her past experience also includes advising clients on tax and ERISA compliance for defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans.  Jen also wrote on fiduciary responsibility for the 2003 - 2006 cumulative supplements to Employee Benefits Law and contributed to several Midwinter Reports of the Subcommittee on Fiduciary Duty of the ABA Section on Law and Employment Law. 

Jen graduated magna cum laude from the American University Washington College of Law.  Prior to becoming an attorney, Jen was a fundraising professional for an educational foundation in Washington, DC.

Jen is admitted to practice law in Maryland and Washington, D.C.